Most of my neighbors are lovely
people, friendly and considerate. But, just like every body has an asshole,
every group has one, also.
One of my neighbors is this group’s
asshole. He (and his wife) are very inconsiderate
and seem to take pleasure in the pain of others. I was told that they used to
have a habit of taking anything and every little thing to small claims court –
until a dying child, playing in a neighboring yard, broke a small branch off of
one of their trees to make a toy. After they sued the child’s mother for the
cost of replacing the tree (with labor – a sum of about $1000!), the judge not
only gave them nothing, he threatened to fine them for filing frivolous and
malicious filings, if they ever made a similar claim!I don't know if it's true but it sounds like them.
The property of these obnoxious people
borders mine. Every time it snows, they use their snowblower to clear snow into my yard. Their snowblower is powerful and they use it to fling snow
high enough to clear their boundary fence, so it plummets with a lot of force when it
finally reaches the ground. I have a
long downspout on the gutter that's closest to their property, which runs through hedge in front of my house to
drain onto my lawn. The outflow is glued onto the downspout, which is, in turn, glued onto the gutter. In addiiton, the downspout is supported by a cinderblock, strategically hidden in my hedge. Several times, the heavy load from their snowblower
has knocked the downspout off of my rain gutter, which allows water to collect
along the edge of my foundation, occasionally flooding my basement. It really
annoys me. I’ve asked their son to not do this (and he stopped) but the old man continues to do
as he pleases. The couple used to spend most
winters in Florida and when they did, their son would clear their snow. For the
last few years, they’ve stayed all winter in Massachusetts; I wish they’d go
back to Florida and never return!
I’ve
got to confront the old man and tell him to stop flooding my basement. He’s not
nice, though, and I dread confrontations with any unpleasant people, but these ones are particularly unpleasant. Is it my discomfort in confronting him worth
not having my basement flooded? Hmmm.I need to think about this a bit more, probably until the NEXT heavy snowstorm!
Before Jack was born, one of the
neighbors was my obscene phone caller. He only called when I was alone, so I
knew that he could see who was home by which cars were in the driveway. And he
called frequently. I would hang up but he would keep calling. Usually, I would have
to unplug the phone when I was alone but then I couldn’t get calls from anyone
else! It really annoyed and frightened me. I had someone watching me – what if
he decided to do more than just watch and call? He even called all night as I
wallpapered the living room and hallway.
I tried
all kinds of things to try to get him to stop calling. From the sheer number of time that he
psycho-called, my merely hanging up seemed to turn him on, so I got a loud
whistle and blew it into the phone. Sometimes he would hand up, but more often,
he would just continue with his stroke fantasy. I would set the phone down on
the floor, off of the hook, cover it with a towel, and walk away. Eventually,
he’d hang up and it would start the “off the hook” whistle. Nothing really worked
to make him stop. Then, accidentally, I found the magic response.
I was
taking summer school class – calculus II. The course met for daily for six
weeks and I had homework every day. It was hard work and I needed to do my
homework as soon as I got home, while the material was still fresh in my mind. John
had started his car business, though, and people would call the house, asking
about cars that he’d advertised. On this
day, after class, I drove home and, as I started to get out of the car, I heard
the phone ringing in the house. It pulled me from my musings about how to solve
that day’s integral problems. I yanked my keys out of the ignition, ran up the
steps, and quickly unlocked the door. I lunged across the kitchen to catch the
call before my caller gave up. It was him, breathing and murmuring the usual nasty
things. I was irritated. I had too much to do to put up with this fool. I took a
deep breath, moved the phone receiver from my face, looked at it quizzically,
and said, out loud but to myself, “Oh, GREAT. It’s my pervert.”
I
looked around for my whistle to try to blast his eardrums but suddenly, I heard
the dial tone! My obscene caller thought that I was talking to someone in the
room and he hung up on me, mid-perv!
He
never called again. Apparently, he only got his thrills in calling if I was
alone and frightened. Seemingly accompanied and bitterly sarcastic, I was no
longer attractive to this pervert. I often wondered which house he lived in.
Another neighbor told me about the fellow on the corner, who routinely stood in
full view in the front window, naked and with an erection, as she drove past
every morning. He moved out shortly after my last call. It might have been him,
but another neighbor had been caught peeping through windows, so you just never
know!
I suspect that unneighborly
neighbors are the bane of most American nieghborhoods. These unpleasant people and their
victims certainly fill the schedules of a multitude of “small-claims court” television
programs on daytime TV.
