Houston, we have a problem

I love checking in with my neighborhood Facebook page to keep up with what is going on in the 'hood.  I lived in a really nice master planned community in the suburbs of Houston.  Great school district, nice homes and fabulous people.  I felt very lucky every day when I drove into our community as it is so pretty with all the nice flowers and trees and my girls' school right across the street...can you hear the music just floating in the air?  Okay, I'll cut to the chase now.  A very nice woman who has a busy job and 3 children decided to start our community newsletter--she is a volunteer spending hours on this newsletter and doing an outstanding job.  To further help the community, she started a Facebook Community News page, just for Gleannloch Farms, with a mission of "neighbors helping neighbors".  We could pass along good service companies we've used, school info, new restaurants in the area--things that the whole neighborhood could benefit from knowing about.  It would be helpful and friendly for all.  We would get to know our neighbors and be forever friends....<sigh>
NOT!!!

The Gleannloch Farms FB page has been highjacked.  It's been taken over by quite a few negative and bitter homeowners who use it as their personal forum to gripe ("Warning: Gripe Session" a recent post said) about any petty issue they want to discuss (Just spent the day at the Rice University book store!).  I just want to yell at these people, HEY!  Get a blog for that!!!  Or, go to YOUR personal FB page (it has your name on it) and bitch up a storm.  One guy called the Municipal Utility District (MUD) board crooked because his water bill is higher than last month.  Never mind there are residents on the MUD board he is slandering....Dude, don't try to find a solution for your water bill, just go on the FB page and start calling names--that should help solve your problem.

But what really gets me going are the people who post criticism on there in the name of "letting everyone know"....like that makes it right to call a neighbor "Our neighborhood drunk" and post pictures of him getting arrested at our Kroger!  For the record, he had issues with medication, but good grief, does anyone have any compassion?  They even post pictures of the teenage drivers in our neighborhood when they see kids speeding or running stop signs, which I know is wrong, but give our kids a break!  They are just learning to drive and getting experience on the road.

Well, I wanted to answer a couple of these unpleasant folks, so first up, I'd like to address the person who said Rob Patterson doesn't care about kids getting broken arms at the Farm League:  Hello, what you posted could not be any further from the truth and someone who opens a park for KIDS sports and spends his every free moment helping KIDS cares that a KID broke his arm.  Not to mention that you posted a link to a rock band, which tells me, along with your unkind post, that you're just not that smart.

Next up, the woman that posts on the page at least 3 times a day--sometimes more!  She seems as friendly as a cactus plant.  She is constantly ragging on the HOA board, complaining about teenagers' driving and anything else she wakes up mad about.  Her posts yesterday about pushed me over the edge when she took the time to go on the page to complain about the lifeguards not checking for resident's pool tags ONCE--ONCE, okay!!!  Then she goes on to defame the lifeguards as "staring into space and picking their nose".  Those lifeguards are someone's kids in our neighborhood--in fact, I know several of them past and present, and they're all really good, hard-working kids/young adults such as Benton Burnett, Trevor Young, Bridget Tomlinson and Hunter Lahasky to name a few.  She then started in on the tennis leagues and how all the tennis people should run things--good for Jillian though, she wrote her a note saying how untrue everything posted there was.  I'm going to have to write something back, too.  The tennis committee over the past 10-11 years has worked really hard to make teams and find a place for everyone to play at GLF.  We only have 6 courts, people!  There is only so much time with over 2,000 residents to get on the courts.  This cactus-personality woman has posted to the GLF page over 100 times in the month of July alone!  REALLY!!!

At first I thought some of the unpleasant people were entertaining.  But now, it's bordering on slander and defamation of character as these haters write horrible things about friends and neighbors. They sure are brave when they get behind their computers--I really don't think they would say those things face-to-face.  Jackie, who is the page moderator, is now stuck with the task of trying to make these haters stop slandering their neighbors or at the least, just post what they want to say without name-calling.  She keeps reminding the group of "neighbors helping neighbors" but I guess these people have so much time on their hands, they feel the need to tattle-tell about teenage lifeguards picking their nose.  Glad Katherine & Laura never lifeguarded at Gleannloch Farms pools....