Does anyone else have a crazy neighbor? I do. Let me tell you about mine.
Let's call him Jim. We moved here twelve years ago, and aside from small talk with our neighbor have kept mostly to ourselves and avoided Jim. Jim has been a resident since 1960, and I think that he believes that this has entitled him to ... to something. Even though he has lived on our street and bought his house only four short years before we did. Even though I have paid far and away more property taxes than he has or ever will.
It does not matter to Jim -- for whatever reason, he believes he is entitled to something.
But whatever it is, the perks of the title include dumping snow from his driveway into our lawn and coming over to my backyard uninvited and shouting like a lunatic. Jim likes the bottle, and he likes the bottle especially when he is driving his little tractor to lift the snow in his driveway and put it in our yard. At least he did until he was forced to sell his tractor.
One day, about eight years ago, I confronted Drunk Jim, after a full days' work of dumping his snow into our yard and driveway. Good ol' Jim started swearing in ways that would make a sailor blush, but he did get the point. He never did it again, and I never talked to him again .... until two years ago, when a friend of his backing out of his driveway and struck our car, which was already on the road. We were going to let that little mishap pass, but Jim's friend insisted in providing our insurance information and verbally abusing my wife claiming it was her fault. So, instead, we filed a claim, and of course he was found to be at fault and his insurer was forced to pay us $1,500. Thank you, Jim's friend, for being such a boor. You saved us having to pay our deductible.
Since then, I have not talked to Jim. But recently, while I was out raking leaves, he walked over to our backyard and started shouting at me in front of my daughters. It seems that he was upset that I was blowing leaves into someone else's yard, and as the self-appointed President of the ever-so-non-existent Residents' Association, he apparently felt obligated to do something about it. Mind you, it was not his property, and no neighbors have ever complained that I blow leaves onto their properties because .... I don't.
I told Jim to leave my property, and I'm sure that we will carry on for another two or three years before Jim's next crazy moment. The questions I have are do you, like me, have a crazy neighbor, and what is your crazy neighbor story?
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