You Don't Have to Agree. You Do Have to Live There.

Your husband is right and your sister is brave and wrong. Don’t say anything.

Here’s why: your neighbor knows exactly what those signs say and why they’re in the yard. They’re not there by accident. This is not a man who forgot to consider your feelings — this is a man who has considered them and decided his opinion matters more than your comfort, because it’s his yard. He’s correct about that much.

If you knock on his door and tell him the signs bother you, one of two things happens. He says fine and takes them down, in which case he resents you for the next decade while smiling at your driveway. Or he says no, in which case you’ve confirmed you’re enemies and nothing changes except you now have a declared adversary fifteen feet from your bedroom window.

You live in Georgetown. Half of Georgetown put up the same signs. The other half put up the opposite signs. That’s not a neighborhood crisis — that’s Tuesday in a swing county.

Here’s what helps: look at something else. Look at your own yard. Look at your door. Look at the live oak in your front yard if you have one, because live oaks in Georgetown are genuinely beautiful and they have nothing to say about anything.

Your neighbor is not going to change. You can.

— Vera