A yellow “notice of violation” sat there on Carol’s front step. Not a real one, just one of those fake ones her neighbors liked to give her every few months. Sometimes they were creative—her car insurance had expired (how did they know?), the smell of her cats was reaching the end of the block (not true)—but most of them were about the same old thing. Carol picked up the slip, saw the word “dolphins,” and tore it up without a second glance. 

 

The fake violation slip was of course referring to the large painting canvasing the front side of Carol’s house. It pictured four dolphins wearing sunglasses playing under the sea—a timeless combination of cute and hilarious. Carol had it installed three years ago, using the last of Jim’s insurance payout to pay for that and a bright pink paint job for the house. The yellow slips started almost immediately.  

 

Now, it wasn’t a violation of anything to cover the side of your house with a painting, but that didn’t stop the neighbors from sticking their nose into Carol’s business. And always through those stupid yellow slips. The message they were sending with their “notices of violation” was not a disagreement they had with her, or suggestions as to how she should maintain her home, but a decree, an order, a demand that she conform not to a few humorless neighbors, but to society at large, despite the unalterable fact that these neighbors didn’t represent society at large, and their notices of violation were nothing more than yellow slips to be torn and disposed of.  

 

Carol stepped out onto her lawn and looked up at the painting. Mary, the smaller dolphin to the far right of the picture, smiled her innocent little porpoise smile, her head lifted to just the right angle so that it looked like she was smiling at the sun. And that made Carol smile. Then there was Peter, Delilah, and Sarah—all smiling and swimming around alongside Mary, blissfully ignorant of expired car insurance, cats that wouldn’t stop having kittens, and little yellow slips on their front porch that told them they did not belong.