Now before we get started here, I should describe my effort to engage my THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM and let go of something I cannot change. I am giving up arguing with and spewing sarcasm to the ‘virtual people’  (recorded voices, used by any company with more than one employee) trapping me into playing ‘Voice Recognition Hell’.  You know, I say, “Jerry’s Bar and Grill,” and cheerful virtual person says, “Jerrold Barbill?  Did I get that right?”…I am giving up the fight, joining technological reality… Now on to the elementary view.

We humans like to control our space.  Maybe it’s an evolutionary element…maybe those who best managed to get take care of their space …survived.

Now, wait a sec, this doesn’t mean you get to walk on other people’s toes and blame it on evolution.  We have a ‘fight or flight’ stress response hanging around in our psyche to save us from saber-toothed tigers, too.  And, just like our stress response is not all that useful…  (How many times in your life will you actually be called upon to lift a car off a person?)

…Our little desire (desperate need) to control our space can do more harm than good in our lives.  Which brings us to the six houses across from the elementary school and the people who live there.  Houses in the area around the school have sweeping St. Augustine front yards.  Every school day, carloads of parents and children park along the curb across from school. In the morning, parents are busy covering last minute reminders, kids are searching for backpacks, and sliding out of the cars. Every afternoon parents return loading talking kids into cars. Morning and night neighborhood children close enough to walk to school converge from all directions.

So where’s the problem?  Several years ago, one of the home owners with the elementary school view decided to reclaim the slightly beaten down St. Augustine along the curb in front of the house. He or she put up a homemade sign– cardboard tacked to a ruler…which read: “Please stay off the grass.”

The sign was beaten to the turf with the first car door swinging open.  A few days later a larger sign, still cardboard and a Sharpie, but this time nailed to a stake from Home Depot, replaced the first effort.  The homeowner’s efforts stirred the hearts of others along the street who had suffered the patter of little St. Augustine. Two other signs popped up…to no avail.

Homeowner number one then sticks two signs along the curb, this time printed in RED Sharpie.  His or her fellow protesters next door followed suit. Still the kids with more on their mind did not notice the signs.  Blades of grass were trampled.  Little lives were not changed.

Next, the homeowner surrounds the contested strip along the curb with a low white wire Home Depot fence.  Children think the little fence is fun to hop.  More signs, more little wire fences….Until today.  Today the distressed homeowner put up a two foot high white wire fence….about 50 feet long and two feet wide….think about it…this is really ugly…and the homeowner has planted spindly shrubs close together along the fifty feet of weird looking white picket fence.  Children do not step on homeowner’s lawn.

Can we say the homeowner has won?  How much time and money and stomach lining has gone into this project?  Are you glad, as I am that I am not the spouse of the obsessed one?  Can you imagine the evening conversations?

Oh, and yes, I have to say it…the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is that part of us that can convince us to persist in a LOSING ACTIVITY.  The THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM…is telling us we can’t win this battle….or, that if we do win….(the homeowner still has the ‘sit out in the yard every morning and night with a shotgun’ strategy)…the victory will not be worth the cost.

Marriage and having siblings usually awaken us to the skill of ceding territory…but not always.  We can’t have our territory OUR WAY all the time and share the planet or house with other people.  I’ve awarded my special person the edges of the bed for his shoes…I thought of the ‘sitting watch with a shotgun’ ploy, but he’s sneaky, he’d distract me somehow.  My picture of the world has all shoes in the closet.  I do not get everything I want.

Now, as for giving up territory…let’s talk about Crazy Dog and her pushy ways….