My neighbor wasn’t so much awful–just totally annoying.
A couple days after we moved into our house, he saw us outside and came to the wall separating our properties to introduce himself. (NOTE: a cinderblock wall of varying heights separating is standard NM city landscaping.) He held out his right hand flat, palm down so he could prominently display his US Naval Academy ring like he was the pontiff expecting you to kiss the ring. Then he announced his wife had been Miss Arkansas back in 196x. These were individuals in their middle-late 40s or so with 2 high school aged kids. I thought it was just odd.
That entitled, odd behavior persisted for the nearly 20 years we were neighbors. They held frequent outdoor parties, but the only single time they ever invited us was because they knew their party was going to be going on until very late–after midnight–and we had elementary age kids in the house. There was live music, tents, catering—all of this on a typical less than 1/4 acre suburban neighborhood lot. He wanted to bribe us not to file a noise complaint.
The husband thought we were stupid or something….. I had to put up blackout curtains in both my kids’ bedroom because he pointed a security light on the side of his garage directly at their windows. When I mentioned it, he said it motion activated and shouldn’t cause any problems… um… it stayed on all night and definitely was NOT motion activated. He never adjusted the light, though the people who moved into the house after he sold it, did immediately.
Another time they hosted a party for his daughter. She was on the dance team at the high school and the entire team was sleeping over for an end of season celebration. He and his wife played deaf, dumb and blind as the party spiraled out of control and outside into their front yard and ours. The football team dropped by, bringing boom boxes and liquor. There was screaming, revving engines, some street racing, girls leaving w/ boys then returning. A couple of the guys wrestled our large stucco covered cinderblock mailbox over and beat with baseball bats. It was very loud and near midnight when the police showed up to break it up. (We had considered calling the police several times, but didn’t. Semi afraid that large drunk football players armed with baseball bats might do something even worse to the house…) The officers rang the neighbor’s door bell several times before the neighbors answered. They claimed they hadn’t heard “anything” and didn’t even know the girls had gone outside. (Riiiiight…..)
The next morning around 10-11am, DH and I were outside picking up broken stucco & cinderblock plus broken glass, beer cans, beer bottles and –yuck!– even a few used condoms out of our front yard when a mother of one of the dance team members who was there to pick up daughter, stopped to talk to us before proceeding to front door of the neighbor’s house. She saw what we were doing and asked if there had been wild party here the night before. We assured her, yes, yes there was, with lots of boys and alcohol and sex. She was visibly upset and said she had been promised that would be no drugs, alcohol or boys at the team sleepover. We just laughed!
After the mother left, the neighbor comes to where we were cleaning up. He was clearly pissed off. He confronted us and demanded to know if we had called the police. Told him honestly that we hadn’t. (Knew who did, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.) He clearly didn’t believe us and just sort of huffed at us like an angry rooster and put his hands on hips in exasperation. He opened and closed his mouth a few time trying to decide what to say, then just stomped off. He saw the broken mail box and never asked how it happened and never offered to pay to repair it.
A friend of mine attended the same church as those neighbors did said they were notorious there for volunteering for activities, never showing up, but bragged and bragged about how involved they were with the church.
The real kicker was after my husband had died and about 6 weeks after the funeral. He & his wife randomly showed up at my door in their church clothes. She thrust a still warm “dump cake” out to me and offers their condolences, Then he asked how my late husband died ( None of his damned business. I really didn’t want to rehash his death with them.) The husband then assured me I should never call the police if there was break-in at my house because he would come over with one of his guns and shoot any invader. I mean, WTH? In 20 years there had never been a break in anywhere in the neighborhood. I resented his implication I was a poor helpless widow who needed his protection to feel safe in her own home.
!!
