“I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.”

The comic strip Peanuts was extremely popular when I was in high school, and I was definitely a fan. Linus was the one I most identified with, and yesterday I had reason to recall what is probably young Mr. Van Pelt’s most famous line:

I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.

Yesterday was trash day, and good citizen that I am, I brought my trash out at 7 a.m., as I always do on the morning of trash pickup. I believe that, technically, it’s okay to put it out anytime after 5 p.m. the night before. It’s just not the wise thing to do if you live in an area where there are both bag-slashing trash pickers AND tons o’rats. Come to think of it, wise is the wrong word. After all, if you’re the sort who doesn’t give a rat’s or bag-slasher’s ass whether there’s garbage all over the street, there’s nothing unwise about it. 

It is, however, entirely wrong to do so, especially after the nice little old widow-lady who goes out and cleans up the garbage-strewn sidewalk and re-bags all the trash that’s spilling out of slashed bags has left so many polite ‘we’re all in this together’ notes up in the building asking people to bring their trash out in the morning. Especially garbage. Inert stuff in recycle bins and clear recycle bags is kind of okay night before, as the rats ignore it and, for the most part, trash pickers can see through the clear recycle bags and tell without slashing that there aren’t any money-back cans in there.

Anyway, at 6:30 a.m. I was not thrilled to be picking up garbage on behalf of the perfectly able-bodied folks who inhabit this building.

Where there is injury, insult it sure to follow, and yesterday’s second condo injury was finding that someone who owns a condo in this building – but does not live here – had taken it upon himself to paint our front door battleship grey.

My building is one of a block-long row of handsome light-grey granite buildings dating from 1860 or thereabouts. Almost all of these buildings sport battleship grey doors.

There’s no rule requiring this, although there is an approved list of colors and the poo-bahs may, in fact, prefer that we all suit up in battleship grey. But I don’t think there is an actual rule making this the color of obligation. And we’ve long had a dark red door, which distinguishes our building and makes it IMHO more welcoming.

But, if the other 5 owners – none of whom, I should add, actually live in this building – had voted to go grey, I would have been fine with it. But this was a unilateral move on one owner’s part (in collusion, I suspect, with another owner). And I can say with as near to 100% confidence that I can say anything, that, if there had been a vote, these two would have been voted down 4-2 if I’d ask for the other 3 votes.

(That this is an exceedingly odd building, with an exceedingly odd condo association, is a tale for another day.)

When the painter was by late last week, and I asked him about the paint color, he weaseled a bit and said it was “probably” the primer. But it’s not. I did give unilateral mover a call, and he was a bit weasel-y as well about how the grey door had come about.

I have sent off an all-owner email, expressing my annoyance about this. (No response as of this writing.)

And I then went out and did what any self-respecting mankind loving people hater would do: mani-pedi, with a color toe-nail polish that I wouldn’t ordinarily select.

This picture does neither my feet – they’re not bright orange – nor the color of the polish – a very nice turquoise – any justice. But it’s not my ordinary dark-ish pink or dark-ish red. And it sure ain’t battleship grey, either.

Did I mention that I love mankind? It’s just people – other than my wonderful friends and family and the folks at the nail place – I can’t stand.