Bad Neighbors



"Ned, your granddaughter called and wants her shorts back"





We’ve all had those neighbors that cause us trouble.  There are those that are always too loud, who party all hours of the night, and end up with all their living room furniture on the front lawn by the next morning.  There are those that have pets that poop in your yard for you to step in barefooted as you get your morning paper.  Those that have the dog that barks constantly as their owners seem totally oblivious to the noise.  Neighbors that spy on your every move, waiting for you to do something stupid or interesting so they can gossip about it in order to make their own lives more interesting. 

 I’ve told stories of my bad neighbors who wanted snakes killed and started out of control fires, and other junk, so now I will turn the other cheek.  I won’t tell all here as I think the statute of limitations is still in effect on a few.  But, here are a couple of stories about me being the bad neighbor.

Encounter #1

I lived in North Carolina in a town called Huntersville near Charlotte for a couple of years.  I had only been living there a few weeks, when I returned home from a three day business trip to find an elderly gentleman standing in my front yard holding a baseball bat. 

If you have ever been in this position, you know a lot of things go through your mind such as “Was that girl I dated last week married?”, “Did I forget to pay my bookie?”, “Did I get drunk and pee in the neighbors’ begonias?” or  “Is this guy a door-to-door baseball bat salesman?”  With a lump in my throat, and my mind racing to remember any clue about someone I may have wronged recently, I pulled to the curb in front of my house instead of the driveway or garage like normal.  I looked over in my seat, and with quick thinking grabbed my white hard hat, put it on, and picked up my notebook.  I stepped out of my truck looking all official and asked the slugger “Excuse me sir, are you the homeowner?”  His response was not near as friendly as mine.  He said “No, but when I get a hold of him, he’s gonna wish he wasn’t the homeowner”.  Oh no.  That doesn’t sound good at all.

With my brain working surprisingly faster than I thought it could, I told him I was the local utility guy and was surveying the neighborhood for some underground utility problems.  I asked him where he lived and why he was so upset.  He said “I live right behind this house and this idiot guy here has left his flood lights in the backyard burning day and night for several days now.  Every night when we go to bed, those bright flood lights shine directly into our bedroom window causing it to look like we are lying on a railroad track in a tunnel waiting to be dismembered by the approaching train.  My wife and I haven’t slept in three days.  Not only because of the lights, but because of her non-stop nagging for me to do something about it! So, I have come over here to either knock out the lights or knock out the homeowner. But, apparently he’s not home because I have been ringing the doorbell and knocking for 30 minutes now.” 

I thought to myself, crap, I didn’t even know I had flood lights back there, much less that I had left them on.  I said “Sir, let me make a phone call first before you do something crazy and get arrested.  I’m sure my office has his name and information for billing purposes. Maybe we have his cell phone number so we can get in contact with him”.

I took my cell phone and pretended to call “my office” and sort of walked away a little so he only heard some kind of chatter but couldn’t make out what I was saying.  I took about 5 minutes of pacing around, then got off the phone and said “Sir, it’s been handled.  My dispatcher contacted the homeowner who is apparently away on business, but will be returning later today.  She will pass the information on to him to take care of the lights when he returns.”  The old man walked away with his head down mumbling something under his breath about an itchy knife, or something, waiting for him at home.  And he didn’t even have the courtesy to thank me for all my pretend work and trouble.

 As he slowly moseyed back home, I walked around the yard for a few minutes looking at the ground real stupid like for some imaginary underground utility problem, looked next door, nodded my head a few times, shook my head a few times, raised an eyebrow and pretended to jot down a few very important notes.  Then, when he was out of sight, I hopped in my truck and drove off. 

After wasting an hour or so at the local Walmart, I returned to my house, as covertly as possible pulled in the driveway and scanned the area for the great Bambino, who was undoubtedly hiding in the bushes waiting to “take out my lights”.  No sign of him.  I quietly eased my truck into the garage, made a bee line to the flood light switch (which before today didn’t even know existed), quickly turned them off, got my ladder, went directly into the backyard and removed the bulbs so that this would never happen again.  

Luckily, my back yard stayed dark and he never came back over.

Encounter #2

After living in Huntersville in the same house mentioned above for about a year, I came home one day, grabbed some bubba burgers out of the freezer and fired up the grill.  As you can tell by encounter #1, my backyard backed up to numerous other neighbors’ backyards.  Some had privacy fences, some didn’t.  Mine didn’t. One other fenceless neighbor was outside grilling at the same time I was and yelled over at me “Hey, great weather for grilling, huh!”  I responded by agreeing, went back in the house, and grabbed the burgers and my grilling spatula.  When I stepped outside again, I thought of something funny and yelled it back at the neighbor that was grilling.

Now, I guess not all people are as humorous as I think I am, or watch as much TV as I do (which is not a whole lot, just a few hours a week unless it’s football season), or remember all the stupid unimportant stuff that I do.  I’m not sure if you have seen this particular commercial, in which a bunch of guys are outside grilling in their yards then they all start yelling something about Hillshire Farms smoked sausages.  It’s a very annoying, yet catchy, commercial.

So, here I am being stupid and thinking I’m so funny and this neighbor is going to be on the same level with me and have a quick comeback.  As I hold up my huge metal grilling spatula, I yell at my neighbor “GO MEAT!” whereby he gets a very strange look on his face, abruptly turns, goes into his house, and slams the door behind him.  I thought it was strange, maybe his phone rang in the house and he had been dreading the call all day.  So, I finished cooking my burgers without seeing him again that night, went in the house, settled in, ate, watched stupid stuff on TV, and thought nothing else about it.

The very next day I get home from work and there are about 30 guys feverishly building a privacy fence around the angry grilling neighbor’s yard.  I step out on my back deck and I hear one worker say it’s time to knock off.  Suddenly neighbor grill-boy steps out of his back door, sees me and yells at the workers “You will finish that fence before you leave here!”  Back to work they went as if the warden had spoke, and finally finished the fence about 11pm that night.

I grilled numerous times after that, walked the backyard, peeped over his fence, and pretty much TRIED to see him outside so I could strike up some small talk or something.  I never, ever saw that man again.  One time I stepped outside and saw his daughter was playing on their deck.  Suddenly, an arm reached out of their back door and yanked her inside so fast that her toy actually hung in the air for a moment before gravity realized it was there.

Now, I never really found out why that phrase I yelled caused such a problem.  Did he think I was making a pass at him?  Had he been ridiculed with the “go meat” phrase before?  Did his wife yell that phrase at him in the bed sometimes? Did he get fired from Hillshire Farms in the past? Did he think I was dyslexic and meant to say “go team”?  Had he never seen the commercial?  I really didn’t understand how I could have offended him so badly.

But still, I thought it was hilarious and hoped I would see him out grilling again so I could yell something else stupid like “Where’s the beef?” or “Crank it, spank it, smack it on the bing-bong!” or loudly sing “It’s peanut butter jelly time!”  Or hold a hot dog up in the air and say “Look at my wiener!”

Oh well, no such luck.

Goofy neighbors.