stop following me

When someone seems to be boisterously challenging toward me, sometimes I try to "dish it back" and it usually doesn't work; I am not good at it.  Words emerge from my mouth and then they make no sense.

Someone said to me, "They're cutting the trees in your yard!"
And I replied,
"Were you looking at my yard?" -- trying to be boisterously challenging, back.

It was pointed out to me -- "You live on the main street."
Oh yeah. ...

When I first moved into the house, bringing with me two black and white Boston cats, some friends from a nearby small town visited and sat in the living room.  Since the house is on our town's main street, the merpph-swoosh of traffic outside was almost constant -- I had already become so used to it that I didn't notice it. 

One of my small-town guests commented, "Boy, it's loud here."

A few months later someone from Temple, Texas visited.  Sitting in the back yard eating fruit, he said, "Boy, it's quiet here."

-----------------------  I guess it is true that if you live on the main street of a town of 11,000 people, you cannot really be suspicious that if someone drives by your house and notices something that they were "being nosy," or "too inquisitive."  Everyone's going to drive by.
For people who live on the quieter residential streets, it's different.  If the same vehicle drives by and drives by and drives around and does it more than once or twice, and he doesn't live there, the whole neighborhood notices, and wonders.

I used to know a guy who worked as a salesman and another, older salesman who worked in the same place would follow him around, seeing what he was doing.  When the Follower followed the Salesman to his sales calls, the Salesman wondered if the Follower was wanting to complain, "That was supposed to be my account!"  But when the Follower started (and continued) to drive by the Salesman's house, he would feel like, Hey there are no accounts to be sold here; drive somewhere else, please. 

Once in exasperation, he said, "I've even thought of filing harassment charges -- I mean, it's stalking!"  But by his tone I could tell he didn't really want to "file" any "charges" -- he just wanted to live, and be left alone.
And -- he supposed -- it was a public street of the local city government or whatever, so anybody was probably allowed to drive on it.

And then one of his neighbors would say to him, "That guy from your work was drivin'-around-the-block again.  What does he want?"

"I don't know."

"Why does he do that?"

"I don't know."

-------------------------  I remember when the state legislature passed a bill to either outlaw, or put a limit on, what was then the new term, "stalking"...early or mid-nineties.  As senators debated it, lobbyists outside the Senate joked that they were all going to be arrested and charged with "stalking" because they were always having to  follow after a busy, fast-moving senator or representative to get a word in about a bill.  And then walk with them while they walk to their next committee or caucus.

Really, when you think about it that way -- we would sit and watch them while they did the people's business;
we would watch them, & then when they would come out we would follow them and walk along with them...what else would you call that besides stalking - ? lol

But of course not every lobbyist would be following every legislator all at the same time -- like a herd -- it wasn't that scary ...

----------------------------  I used to wonder, with the Following salesman:
 If he's paid on commission, wouldn't he make more money if he took the Time that he spent shadowing his co-worker and converted that Time into Sales-and-Prospecting Time?

I couldn't understand someone wasting their time like that, when there are contacts to be made, and profits to be created.  I mean, you'd literally be losing money, by spending time on -- stalking.  And I wondered why the manager of the business tolerated / tacitly encouraged that behavior.  A manager I know says, "Usually -- it goes to the top."

I think people should fill all of their time with --
1) doing things that are productive and constructive;
2) having fun; and
3) sleeping.

If everyone filled each 24-hour space with those three items then no one would cause any problems.  Problems would still occur, like floods and stuff, but people could work to repair the damage from things like that under the heading of Item 1 -- doing something constructive. ...

(Put on List. ...)

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