| General Non-Fiction posted June 15, 2019 | Chapters: |
...9 10 -12- 13... 
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When neighbors make life challenging
A chapter in the book A Fly on the Wall
On Being Pushed To The Limit
by Rachelle Allen
January 18, 2015
Mr. Rogers, the host of the PBS children's show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and I have a very different idea of what comprises "a beautiful day in the neighborhood."
For me, the perfect neighbor is one who's pleasant, greets me nicely when our paths cross, and keeps his or her property neat. I'm not looking to "be friends" with my neighbors as much as I'm looking "not to be enemies."
But some neighbors just cannot seem to follow that precept. The guy on the other side of our hedgerow, for example. He's actually the same guy who's responsible for our having needed a hedgerow in the first place. Not that it ever deterred him once we put it in.
Whenever my husband and I are outside doing chores, this neighbor feels what we're really doing is signaling that we want him to come over and pontificate about the evils of Satan. Or termites. In his peculiar world, they seem to be equally atrocious commodities.
When we were new to the neighborhood, we politely stood there and listened. Later, as time (and his sermons) went on, we began to get clever. I'd excuse myself to 'check on dinner' (at 10 a.m.), then come out a moment later, holding the handset from our land line. "Bobby, Sweetie!" I'd call out in a sing-song voice, "Phone!" [For the record, this was not a lie; that WAS the phone.]
The problem was that we were not getting our outside work done, and it was starting to make us surly.
So our next tack was to continue working despite his blathering on. While we toiled the lengths and widths of our perimeter, he'd follow close on our heels, preaching and gesticulating. We grew to absolutely despise yard work, something that, before this man, we'd always loved.
After today, though, we're thinking we may have solved the problem once and for all.
It snowed five inches overnight, so we were out at 5:30 a.m., shoveling. We could hire a service, but we actually love both the camaraderie and physical exercise of shoveling. In fact, the first married argument we had was because my new husband had chivalrously shoveled the driveway without me. We battled a good ten minutes over that one until my teenage daughter, on her way out the door, gave us a contemptuous look and said, "You people have ISSUES!"
So, at 6:15 a.m., we were almost done, and I said to Bobby, "I know you have an early appointment today. Why don't you go in and get ready for work. I'll finish this up and then walk the dog."
"Your day starts earlier than mine," he protested. "YOU go get ready for work and I'LL finish this up and walk the dog." (We truly do have the world's stupidest arguments.)
Begrudgingly, I compromised. I flounced into the house, got the dog and huffed insolently around the block while Bobby got to finish the damn driveway. Ten minutes later, just a few steps before the dog and I reached our driveway, our obnoxious neighbor stepped in front of me and began a diatribe.
My ire had not fully abated by this point, though, so I looked him dead in the eyes, leaned a little forward, and hissed, "Shut. Up." He gaped at me, slumped his shoulders, and to my astonishment, retreated to his house!
I felt so giddy, I dashed inside to tell Bobby what had happened.
It made him laugh a lot harder than I had expected until I heard why. As soon as I'd left to walk the dog, Mr. Obnoxious had come over and begun talking to Bobby. Still rankled from the way we'd left things, my husband's patience was decidedly compromised. So he'd shouted at our neighbor, "Listen, Bud; why don't you just SHUT UP!"
My adorable husband and I exchanged high-fives and smooched.
(Sorry, Mr. Rogers. But Bobby and I are convinced that, at some point, even syrupy, perfect YOU would have told our next-door neighbor to shut up.)
January 18, 2015
Mr. Rogers, the host of the PBS children's show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and I have a very different idea of what comprises "a beautiful day in the neighborhood."
For me, the perfect neighbor is one who's pleasant, greets me nicely when our paths cross, and keeps his or her property neat. I'm not looking to "be friends" with my neighbors as much as I'm looking "not to be enemies."
But some neighbors just cannot seem to follow that precept. The guy on the other side of our hedgerow, for example. He's actually the same guy who's responsible for our having needed a hedgerow in the first place. Not that it ever deterred him once we put it in.
Whenever my husband and I are outside doing chores, this neighbor feels what we're really doing is signaling that we want him to come over and pontificate about the evils of Satan. Or termites. In his peculiar world, they seem to be equally atrocious commodities.
When we were new to the neighborhood, we politely stood there and listened. Later, as time (and his sermons) went on, we began to get clever. I'd excuse myself to 'check on dinner' (at 10 a.m.), then come out a moment later, holding the handset from our land line. "Bobby, Sweetie!" I'd call out in a sing-song voice, "Phone!" [For the record, this was not a lie; that WAS the phone.]
The problem was that we were not getting our outside work done, and it was starting to make us surly.
So our next tack was to continue working despite his blathering on. While we toiled the lengths and widths of our perimeter, he'd follow close on our heels, preaching and gesticulating. We grew to absolutely despise yard work, something that, before this man, we'd always loved.
After today, though, we're thinking we may have solved the problem once and for all.
It snowed five inches overnight, so we were out at 5:30 a.m., shoveling. We could hire a service, but we actually love both the camaraderie and physical exercise of shoveling. In fact, the first married argument we had was because my new husband had chivalrously shoveled the driveway without me. We battled a good ten minutes over that one until my teenage daughter, on her way out the door, gave us a contemptuous look and said, "You people have ISSUES!"
So, at 6:15 a.m., we were almost done, and I said to Bobby, "I know you have an early appointment today. Why don't you go in and get ready for work. I'll finish this up and then walk the dog."
"Your day starts earlier than mine," he protested. "YOU go get ready for work and I'LL finish this up and walk the dog." (We truly do have the world's stupidest arguments.)
Begrudgingly, I compromised. I flounced into the house, got the dog and huffed insolently around the block while Bobby got to finish the damn driveway. Ten minutes later, just a few steps before the dog and I reached our driveway, our obnoxious neighbor stepped in front of me and began a diatribe.
My ire had not fully abated by this point, though, so I looked him dead in the eyes, leaned a little forward, and hissed, "Shut. Up." He gaped at me, slumped his shoulders, and to my astonishment, retreated to his house!
I felt so giddy, I dashed inside to tell Bobby what had happened.
It made him laugh a lot harder than I had expected until I heard why. As soon as I'd left to walk the dog, Mr. Obnoxious had come over and begun talking to Bobby. Still rankled from the way we'd left things, my husband's patience was decidedly compromised. So he'd shouted at our neighbor, "Listen, Bud; why don't you just SHUT UP!"
My adorable husband and I exchanged high-fives and smooched.
(Sorry, Mr. Rogers. But Bobby and I are convinced that, at some point, even syrupy, perfect YOU would have told our next-door neighbor to shut up.)
Mr. Rogers, the host of the PBS children's show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and I have a very different idea of what comprises "a beautiful day in the neighborhood."
For me, the perfect neighbor is one who's pleasant, greets me nicely when our paths cross, and keeps his or her property neat. I'm not looking to "be friends" with my neighbors as much as I'm looking "not to be enemies."
But some neighbors just cannot seem to follow that precept. The guy on the other side of our hedgerow, for example. He's actually the same guy who's responsible for our having needed a hedgerow in the first place. Not that it ever deterred him once we put it in.
Whenever my husband and I are outside doing chores, this neighbor feels what we're really doing is signaling that we want him to come over and pontificate about the evils of Satan. Or termites. In his peculiar world, they seem to be equally atrocious commodities.
When we were new to the neighborhood, we politely stood there and listened. Later, as time (and his sermons) went on, we began to get clever. I'd excuse myself to 'check on dinner' (at 10 a.m.), then come out a moment later, holding the handset from our land line. "Bobby, Sweetie!" I'd call out in a sing-song voice, "Phone!" [For the record, this was not a lie; that WAS the phone.]
The problem was that we were not getting our outside work done, and it was starting to make us surly.
So our next tack was to continue working despite his blathering on. While we toiled the lengths and widths of our perimeter, he'd follow close on our heels, preaching and gesticulating. We grew to absolutely despise yard work, something that, before this man, we'd always loved.
After today, though, we're thinking we may have solved the problem once and for all.
It snowed five inches overnight, so we were out at 5:30 a.m., shoveling. We could hire a service, but we actually love both the camaraderie and physical exercise of shoveling. In fact, the first married argument we had was because my new husband had chivalrously shoveled the driveway without me. We battled a good ten minutes over that one until my teenage daughter, on her way out the door, gave us a contemptuous look and said, "You people have ISSUES!"
So, at 6:15 a.m., we were almost done, and I said to Bobby, "I know you have an early appointment today. Why don't you go in and get ready for work. I'll finish this up and then walk the dog."
"Your day starts earlier than mine," he protested. "YOU go get ready for work and I'LL finish this up and walk the dog." (We truly do have the world's stupidest arguments.)
Begrudgingly, I compromised. I flounced into the house, got the dog and huffed insolently around the block while Bobby got to finish the damn driveway. Ten minutes later, just a few steps before the dog and I reached our driveway, our obnoxious neighbor stepped in front of me and began a diatribe.
My ire had not fully abated by this point, though, so I looked him dead in the eyes, leaned a little forward, and hissed, "Shut. Up." He gaped at me, slumped his shoulders, and to my astonishment, retreated to his house!
I felt so giddy, I dashed inside to tell Bobby what had happened.
It made him laugh a lot harder than I had expected until I heard why. As soon as I'd left to walk the dog, Mr. Obnoxious had come over and begun talking to Bobby. Still rankled from the way we'd left things, my husband's patience was decidedly compromised. So he'd shouted at our neighbor, "Listen, Bud; why don't you just SHUT UP!"
My adorable husband and I exchanged high-fives and smooched.
(Sorry, Mr. Rogers. But Bobby and I are convinced that, at some point, even syrupy, perfect YOU would have told our next-door neighbor to shut up.)
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#204 2019 |
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