These particular beauties are presently adorning the front lawn of a dentist’s office and house in the bucolic burb where I live in Northern, NJ (just a stone’s throw from good old NYC). What makes this particular shrine so newsworthy for this column is that the dentist who fashioned the display has seen his share of trouble from his holiday tributes (the fake ladies first appeared sporting bunny ears and tails for Easter), has caused plenty of traffic troubles in town and even has had his display desecrated.
People from my town and the few surrounding it have come to expect a rather garish display at this house. It began a few years ago when the dentist would see to outfitting his ranch, lawns, and driveway come Halloween time. Over the years, pumpkins and big fake inflatable spiders gave way to life-like replicas of famous horror monsters and grew to having the dentist hire young kids to dress as Jason, Freddy or Michael Meyers and run around the ever-increasing crowds brandishing non-working (but very loud) chainsaws. As you’d expect, traffic at the corner house grew unruly as many saw this house and its front lawns and driveway as the place to visit. Neighbors complained, cops were hired to direct cars, and I’ve heard both pro and con about the doings over the years. I love stopping by once a year for the guy’s Halloween display.
Then the dentist began branching out, setting up Christmas and then even, this year, an Easter display that brought his lady mannequins in their Playboy Bunny-like high-cut lingerie and ears. But this display irked one of the guy’s near neighbors, and a woman took it upon herself to cross the busy street and have at the fake ladies with garden shears. She left the bifurcated pieces of the mannequins in the house’s driveway, cutting them in half in full view of the dentist and a good amount of phone videographers. The lady told, whoever was there to listen that day, that she found the display offensive and was dispatching them as she saw fit.
The riled resident was charged with property defacement, last I heard and now our good dentist created this new display for the 4th.
I know we all need to tread lightly in this modern, seemingly evolved age of humans, but as these things so often happen for me, the considerations of sexual imagery prompts and pokes us all to extremes. But to my mind, there are two fundamental concepts to consider here:
1.)  It is against the law to walk onto someone’s property and do damage to anything they display, no matter how offensive you find that display (yes, there are limits to this, but certainly in the case of the dentist’s across-the-street neighbor and one of my fellow citizens, what this lady did was illegal).
2.)  Maybe we should all just calm down a bit and busy ourselves with matters of more import than being so incensed over something someone says or does that’s nothing more than espousing their opinion. And really that’s all it is. Who cares even what a modern day, Nazi spews? It’s just someone’s opinion and even if you feel it is abhorrent, sorry to say, if it is someone’s opinion, it can’t be wrong. Look, if you take that opinion and justify it to the point where you are beating on me because of my skin color or marching onto my front lawn to take down my Playboy-bunny like display, then yes that is wrong…and unlawful. But until that time, shout back, post, blog, do whatever you like to express yourself, but keep your hands to yourself and amp down the righteous indignation, ok? You’ll be fine if somebody has a difference of opinion than you. You’ll live another day if you hear or see something that offends you, I promise.
I can give you the exact address to go check out this 4th display, like I say, it is not so far out of the city. For now, I hope everyone had a great holiday…and that we all just relax a little bit.
