The Tale of a Nosy Neighbor

Max and I live in a duplex. I’ve had interesting neighbors over the years. When Carol and I lived there, we were certain that the young wife was beating her husband. He was such a nice guy and she was a shrew. There have been quiet neighbors and noisy neighbors, bu all in all, it’s not been too bad. Until now.

The worst thing is, the landlord spent 3 years fixing that side of the duplex, so it was empty and Max and I really got used to having a lot of freedom. But, last August that all changed. A woman and her daughter and maybe her son moved in. She was unfriendly to say the least. She avoided eye contact always and the few times I was able to catch her eye and say hello, she would grunt and rush to her car. Then, a man entered the picture. He just showed up one day and over the course of several months began moving stuff in.

My landlord emailed me to tell me that the woman was complaining about my dog barking. Interesting. I live right next door and she won’t speak to me first. Ok, this is not going to be easy. Max and I bought a snow blower last winter and offered to let the guy use it if he wanted. That actually wasn’t accepted with a normal amount of thanks. Another grunt. Hmmm…

Other weird things have occurred over the last months, but this past weekend began an entirely new portion of entertainment. Max and I had an old 1989 Mazda van that we’ve been trying to rid ourselves of for months. I finally called a company who would haul it away for scrap metal. On Sunday, when I drove in the alley after church, this couple and their son were outside messing around and the guy was IN my van! Hmmm…that’s weird. We’d emptied everything out, so there was no reason for him to do this.

As I exited my Jeep, he had gotten out of the van and closed the door, acting as if nothing had happened. I kind of walked towards him and he began asking questions about the van – if it ran, what the issues were. I finally told him that if he wanted to do something with that van, he needed to let me know because I had someone coming to haul it away. No, ever his helpful self, he was just being snoopy.

Monday morning, the salvage company came to haul it away. I had to go back inside to get my driver’s license to make the sale. Out came Jimi, flying up from his basement lair. He began babbling at the driver and when I came out, he was asking pointed questions about how the van worked. The driver finally called me away from him so that we could finish the transaction. No, the car isn’t drivable and these guys don’t care. Stop interfering, you weirdo.

Later on that day, Max came home, and took the laundry out of the house to the Laundromat. He’s done this every week, but it seemed important that Jimi again come flying up from his lair to accost Max and ask about our washing machine. How in the heck does he even know we have one? I’m a little creeped out by the question.

The last time I spent an extended period of time at Bell’s Dell, Jimi asked Max if our Jeep had been in the shop. Umm … no. As I left yesterday, I let the back door slam while I dragged my luggage, etc. to the Jeep. As soon as I got to the door of the Jeep, he again came flying up from the basement to watch me pack up and leave. I am pretty certain that he will ask Max where I’m going for such a long period of time. I can’t wait.

Max and I talked about it while I was on the road. Maybe he could tell Jimi that I was an undercover agent, gone for days at a time protecting the world. But, now that Max had told him that, he would actually have to kill him. We worked through a few scenarios until Max had the perfect response. “I’m sorry, Jimi, I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.” Oh yah … that’s it. I can hardly wait.

There is going to be plenty of fodder for entertainment with this strange couple living next door to us. Max and I are just going to have to work on our backstories a little bit more so that we can at least have some fun with this!