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Witness Me Banging A Nail In The Coffin

We have crazy neighbors. Not crazy charming, like the transgender down the street who keeps changing his cup size, but crazy annoying. Please move out of the neighborhood kind of crazy.

There isn’t one big moment where my husband and I looked at each other and said, “Oh my gawd, they’re crazy.” It’s been more of a slow trickle of assholeishness that moved us there.

Let me give you the steady decline in chronological order:

About a year and a half ago my dog, Junior (AKA The Little Fucker) brought me a bird. A dead bird. He brings them to me all throughout the spring. Sometimes they’re fetal, other times fully formed, they are always disgusting. He is always delighted with himself. Typically I head across the street and ask my firefighter neighbor to please pick up the dead animal. The firefighter always helps, and I always find a little something for his four year old son. It’s what we do. Well, eighteen months ago, when the firefighter wasn’t home I asked my next door neighbor if he’d help with the dead bird in my living room. I knocked on the door and he answered.

“Hi!” I said cheerfully, “would you mind helping me? The dog brought a bird into my house and I was wondering if you could pick it up for me?”

His face contorted and he said, “Just a minute, let me ask my wife.” closed the door in my face and scurried to the back of his house.

Three minutes pass.

“Jessica, I’m sorry, I just don’t feel comfortable with that.” and then he made a move to close the front door.

“Oh why? Do you have to change your tampon?” Was my reply.

Believe it or not, things stayed really nice after that. Their first child was born, we brought gifts, they never wrote thank you notes, we still smiled.

They live like pigs. Their trash cans stay on the street week after week, never being brought in from the curb, other neighbors complain, we do not. We want to have good neighbors. We continue our campaign of sweetness, he gets stranger. He will not make eye contact.

My kids play handball in the back yard, so there is the sound of a ball bouncing. Unless you live on a farm this is what we would classify as good neighborhood noise. Right? Wrong. About six months ago my kids would get yelled at to stop bouncing the ball every time they went outside to play handball. Apparently it was waking the baby, and since she goes to bed at 7.30 the rest of Los Angeles should be silent. After a few go rounds I sent my husband over to talk to our lovely neighbor. The neighbor suggested to my husband that we “find an equitable solution to the problem.” My sweet, kind and wonderful husband explained to him that there was no problem at our house, and that the only equity needed was for him to not yell at our children.

Of course with kids there are balls. My son plays catch with baseballs for hours each day, Jane and her friends play soccer and volleyball. Balls go over the fence and are not returned. Last week Jane’s friend kicked her soccer ball over the fence and needed it for soccer practice, Jane went next door and asked her if she could get the ball please. The answer? “No, not until my husband gets home from work.” It has been ten days, they absolutely refuse to return any of the balls.

Yes, the woman will not leave her house to go into the back yard and return my children’s balls. She also will not permit my children to go into her back yard and retrieve their own balls. When I ask her husband to please toss them over he says the doors are locked, he’ll do it later. I am now reduced to asking them to return the children’s playthings when I see them in the company of other parents, because you know, they don’t want appear to be complete and utter assholes in front of their friends.

In the interim they have begun construction on a fence surrounding their property, the only issue is that they encroached on another neighbor’s property by a full foot and a half, and they attempted to fence in the city easement.

So no, I never blogged about my asshole neighbors before, but I’m at a point where I realize I’ll never like them, and neither will anyone else.

11 thoughts on “Witness Me Banging A Nail In The Coffin”

  1. Awesome response by the hubby to assface neighbor. I live next to a church parking lot, so there is noise. I just chalk it up, like you do to”neighborhood” noise. Can you send the kids over after dark to retrieve said playthings?

  2. Maybe you should start tossing the dead birds over the fence? I could also insert some wry crack about “good fences and good neighbors”, but some people are, always have been and always will be, jerk offs and nothing you say or do will really change them. Eventually they will get theirs…

  3. Funny you should mention tampons and fences…
    We had these yuppie stuck up neighbors when I was in high school, me and a couple of friends would have a tampon launching contest- over the fence was 5 points :)

  4. We used to have shitty neighbors, then we moved. Because of those shitty neighbors, we bought a house backed up to the “green belt”, as they call it here. We paid a crapload for this lot, but it is so worth it not having to look at someone elses backyard.

    It sucks having shitty neighbors, and I totally understand now the anger you must feel over the dude yelling at your children. No way in hell would I let that slide either.

  5. Do I live on the other side of your bad neighbor? Because I SWEAR we have the same problems with ours! We have our house up for sale. Can’t wait to get away from it all!

  6. We refer to one of our neighbors as the “crazy cat lady.” Shortly after we moved into this house, our dog discovered, to her horror, that there was a cat in our backyard. My dog hates cats. She was scratched as a puppy and has a hole in her nose thanks to a cat. I let her out rather than have her go through the window. The cat left the yard in a serious hurry.

    Same thing happens for like three days in a row. I figure the cat is going to figure out a dog lives here that won’t tolerate cats and will stop coming in our yard. No, the crazy cat lady comes over to yell at me because my dog is “scaring” her cat. The cat is apparently elderly (though, we’ve been here almost five years and I still see the damned thing at least once a day, so how elderly could it have been) and she was concerned the dog (meaning my dog) was going to give her cat a heart attack.

    I responded, it is my dog’s yard. If you’re that concerned, keep your cat out of it.

    The other neighbors (actually across the street folks in both cases, the people who are actually next door are cool), insisted on parking a car under one of our trees. I asked, as did my husband, several times that they move the car. We even went so far as to do the whole registered letter thing. Good thing. Seriously bad weather, the tree came down . . . on top of their car. It was obstructing the street, so the county came out to remove the part in the street, which included plucking it out of the car. They inform us that we’re not responsible for the damage to the car because we asked them to move it and because they were parking on county property.

    Of course, now, both sets are running frat houses. Sigh.

  7. Jesus christ! What shit heads! I’d throw eggs at their house in the wee hours of the night. It’s not the right thing to do, but would make me feel better.

    I love your writing style. Glad I came across your site.

  8. Wow. If you have neighbors you are going to have noise and things coming over the fence. This is an something everyone needs to accept if they choose to live in a community.

    I don’t understand people who aren’t good neighbors…you don’t have to be best friends but be FRIENDLY. The people next to us have a son in baseball and our yard gets covered with wiffle balls – we (uh, my kid) gather them up and give them back. They understand if they get them back slightly chewed as we have three dogs.

    I hope your wish comes true and your neighbors move…just not to my neighborhood.

  9. Get A Grip. YOU ARE THE LOUSY NEIGHBOR.
    The Bird is your responsibility. Your dog ( probably Unlicensed) delivered it.
    Handball belongs at the Playground!
    I would take ten like them instead of one like you.
    Move to Monyana!

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