The Fence

My feelings for dogs have certainly evolved over the years. At first I was deathly afraid, then indifferent, and finally a dog loving retard that has to stop and pet everything. My initial fear was instilled in me by my mom of course. Sybil has an irrational fear of dogs. She is convinced they all have been trained to bite her. I would like to say she grew up in a concentration camp where the guards taunted her with german shepherds, but really according to legend she had a dog as a child. I don't know the source of Sybil's trauma, but I do know that when she moved to the suburbs of New Jersey and saw that a neighbor had a Irish Setter her fear went into overdrive and she decided she needed to turn her new house into a fortress.

This post really isn't about dogs. There is plenty of time for me to discuss how I've tortured my mom with my dog on a retractable leash, or the time she locked the car door thinking it being closed wasn't enough to keep a friend's dog from getting to her or how she refers to all dogs as "Her." This post is about the fence she built around her house. I'm not sure I can describe this accurately, but you know how a wood fence has a front side and a back side?

When most normal people put up a fence, they put the finished side out so that people not in the house see the nicer side. It seems like the logical choice. Sybil on the other hand felt if she was paying for a fence and going to be in the yard, she should have the privilege of seeing the nice side. So our entire fence was built with the nice side facing in. When you approached our home it just looked bizarre, not to mention with the back side facing out it made it very easy for less desirables to just climb the fence and come in the yard. Not great when I was being a wise ass and tried to run away from a neighborhood bully. Even the Irish Setter laughed at the fence.

Over time Sybil refused to pay anyone to weather treat the wood so let's just say the fence had a very Grey Gardens look to it. There were entire sections that just fell down. The city eventually made her remove it because it became an eye sore. Thankfully it was after the Irish Setter had gone to dog heaven.