Well Played, Mr. Brown...Well Played

As I left the house this morning, I noticed someone had visited our little street. They left their calling card, or calling flyer. Ours was taped to our mailbox. I looked down the street and noticed everyone else had a similar yellow flyer taped to their mailboxes, too.

What could that be? I asked myself. For the past few weeks heavy equipment has been parked in front of our house and there's a strip of ripped up asphalt that runs the entire length of our street. Were the flyers a notice to us that the road construction needed redoing? Were they telling us to not use our water for a day or two?

What did those flyers say?

I thought these were from the city, or the construction company, but no...they were from a solicitor. Scott Brown (someone I don't know...) had paid our street a visit and let us know he had something to sell. And what he was selling was curb appeal--literally. Scott applies house number on your porch and/or curb for a price. I have to say, I loved the opening line on his flyer.

Reflective home addresses will be install, not painted, on the curbs tomorrow.

At first, I thought, "Great--we're getting new numbers." The writing had such surety, such power behind those words, it sounded like it was a service, maybe our tax dollars hard at work. Mr. Brown made me think this was not a sales pitch, but an official notice. After all, the first paragraph goes on to say how helpful and useful these house numbers are. I mean, they're visible in car headlights at night, which may help police, fire, and ambulance services find your home easily at night when most home addresses can be hard to locate and/or find.

I know this because the flyer tells me so.

But as I continued reading, I saw this is something Mr. Brown does, with the homeowner's permission, of course. I've got to pay to play. To be included, we just fill out the form, and put it in a place where it can be easily seen.

Maybe, if we do purchase, I'll tape it next to our No Soliciting sign.