Friday, August 28, 2015

Neighborhood feud

Apparently, my neighbors hate each other. Here's how I know.


  • A few weeks ago, my mailbox fell (or was knocked) off its post. I went out later to fix it and my neighbor from across the street (we'll call him Mr. Across-the-street) came over and said, "I fixed that for you already". I thanked him and he said, "yeah, I did it because he said he was gonna run it over with his car", indicating my next door neighbor, the guy who mows my lawn and removes the clippings for free because he's into composting (we'll refer to him as Mr. Mower). "Really?", I asked incredulously. "Why would he do something like that?". "Oh, he's a bad guy. Him and his wife. They're swingers. And drug dealers. And they steal. They have wife swapping parties where they deal drugs and they go to California." I'm not sure what going to California has to to do with anything but Mr. and Mrs. Mower have always been very nice to me. They have dogs and last year, they gave me a plate of Christmas cookies. So without acknowledging his claims, I thanked him for fixing my mailbox and went inside.
  • A few weeks later, Mr. Across-the-street posted these signs in his yard:


  • The next morning, there was a City of Tampa code enforcement truck in Mr. Across-the-street's driveway and the signs were down.
  • This past Saturday, I saw a small wooden structure near my mailbox and found out it was housing a camera pointed at Mr. Across-the-street's house. I saw Mrs. Mower outside and asked her what was the deal. "We're having real problems with them and we're trying to protect ourselves. We can move it if it's on your property and you don't want it there." She told me that Mr. Across-the-streets follows them when they walk their dogs, calls Mrs. Mower all kinds of horrible names and once showed up in their garage carrying a baseball bat! I told her, "by all means, do whatever you need to do to be safe."
  • The next day, Mrs. Across the street knocked on my front door. I answered it and she proceeded to give me the lowdown, according to her. She basically said it was a disagreement between the two men of the respective houses and that her hope was that it would die down eventually. Nothing too crazy about that, I thought. "But they are drug dealers and this whole thing started when they asked me to have sex with them and I refused. They've hated us ever since." Umm... "Have you noticed the parties they have over there?", she asked. "I see them eating on their back porch sometimes", I replied. "No, they're always having these big, wife-swapping drug parties." Oh.
Of course, the ideal thing would be to not involved in any way, including not ever hearing about it ever, at all. I guess I have to take a side here. And after taking all of this into account, I think I'm going to side with the people who mow my lawn for free, give me cookies at Christmas time and are probably not kind of insane. Sorry, Across-the-streeters.

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