they call him mr. unpersonality

i attended my first homeowners' association meeting tonight and i realized one thing about homeowners' association/cities/life:

there's always the neighborhood antagonist.

i don't mean the neighborhood bully who's just plain mean to everyone and does whatever he/she wants with careless disregard to the people around them. i mean the person who is the first one to get up during the question-and-answer session of the meeting and has a laundry list of complaints to air. they also are very, very, very sure that the person in charge of said homeowners' association/city/life is trying to cheat them out of their money. i've sat through enough council sessions and similar meetings. i've seen them all.

our neighborhood's very own mr. antagonist jumped up at the beginning of the q-&-a session tonight asking very pointed questions about the annual budget accounting form that he had of course raced to the back of the meeting room to get when they were set out on a table in the middle of the meeting while someone was giving a presentation. where's this account? why doesn't this line and that line measure up? he pretty much accused the accountant of lying when he didn't understand the answers provided to him.

he also felt the urge to interrupt everyone else's questions with his own comment about how he'd try to get such and such fixed but they told him it couldn't be done and how he saw such and such going on at a certain time and no, mr. president you're wrong cause i SAW IT with my own eyes.

really?

let me say it again ... really?

by design we live in one of the friendliest, cleanest, nicest, best-kept neighborhoods in nashville. it's one of those fancy-schmancy new-fangled new-urbanism communities where everything is carefully planned out and where there are sidewalks and fancy streetlights and flowers everywhere.

i'm pretty sure they're not taking my money and spending it on their new yacht. i'm pretty sure they're taking my money and spending it on flowers and a big crazy halloween party complete with hayride. and you know what? that's ok because that's exactly what i wanted/expected when i decided to move here.

i'm curious to know what makes these people tick, but i'm going to go ahead and guess that they themselves were bullied as a child and never had the floor to speak without getting laughed at but have managed to build their confidence. and the level of confidence they have is directly proportional to the amount of time they now spend hogging the floor and is inversely proportional to the number of people who care what they have to say. (i'm pretty sure everyone wanted to vote this dude off the playground today).

and as the nutty dude sitting behind me pointed out, it just feels like 3rd grade all over again.