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I Throw Rocks?

Written by Lotus Carroll, on 07-31-2008

Your neighbors – they can be your best friends or your worst enemies. They can even be total strangers to you, which may, sometimes, be for the best. I never really understood what it was like to live in a suburban-type neighborhood when I was a kid, because we lived out in the country. Sure, there was a house across the street, and some down the road, but there was no house directly next to us on any side. And few houses really, even within sight.

I had no idea what a wonderful thing that was until I “grew up” and lived near others. You know what? People are annoying. Seriously, I love you guys and all, really! I am intrigued by people, love building friendships, and enjoy the company of others, in moderation. But overall, people are, have been, and always will be really annoying creatures. My history with neighbors kind of illustrates this point, with everything from unwanted bodily excretions to people mating with horses. Yes. You read that correctly.

My first time out on my own I lived in an apartment in North Carolina, near the graduate school I was attending. It was actually a nice area, and there were no real problems with the general neighborhood. That being said, the man who lived above me liked to throw his cigarette butts and patio rug dirt down onto my patio. Um, thanks but no thanks, assbag?

The woman who lived across from me was cute and friendly. But she liked to open her door when I was coming home from an entirely too long day at school and strike up a conversation. Not that horrible to converse, but she’d wrangle me into a minimum 30-minute long diatribe about her ex-husband – how much she hated him, how even when his feet touched hers under the sheets towards the end of the marriage she wanted to vomit, and how she’d love to have him killed. Wow. She had me making mental notes not to piss her off, and sleeping with my eyes open.

At one point, a couple of kids came to my door and asked me if they could have some toilet paper. I assumed they lived in the complex and their family had run out, so I gave them a roll. Five minutes later I saw them right outside my living room window, and thought it was odd, but kept walking to the next room to finish a task. When I came back, I decided to go outside and look under my living room window. What awaited me was certainly a surprise. There was toilet paper strewn about – MY toilet paper – and the hugest couple of shit-logs I have EVER seen in my life. And? They were green! What the hell did you kids eat? A bag of dye? Thanks, guys, for practically shitting on my apartment. NOW GO SEE A DOCTOR.

Then, right before I moved to Texas, I was leaving for a plane trip one morning, and when I put my hand on the door knob, it was cold, sticky… and wet. I recoiled, looked at my hand in shocked disbelief, and then as my eyes moved from my hand to the door knob, and then the stoop below the door, I froze as my blood ran cold. I had realized what it was.

Semen.

That’s right. Someone had done the crazy one-eyed snake spitting dance right outside my door, depositing the evidence on my doorknob. They later caught him when he was seen doing the same to another girl in the complex who looked just like me. That’s right, lovely readers, we were hand selected, and he’d been watching us both for some time. Nice, right? Makes you snuggle up to your pillow all cozy-like at night, with gumdrops and lollipops dancing through your dreams. And a fucking knife under your pillow.

I thought it was all over when I moved into a house in a suburban neighborhood in Texas.

And for awhile, it was.

But living out in the wide world, no matter where you are, you learn that people have perfected all kinds of ways of being annoying.

There was the couple who were actively involved in the Home Owner’s Association who would walk their fat dog past everyone’s house every week, making fakity-fake conversation with you if they caught you. And I say caught, because if you saw them? You RAN AWAY. It was really self-preservation in the form of trying to keep yourself out of jail for murdering them with your bare hands. That's how annoying they were. These people were so fake cheery and snottily condescending they made me want to retch, and their “conversations” were just thinly veiled attempts to snoop the property for HOA violations.

Then there was the guy who owned a car with the loudest engine in existence on The Planet Earth. He lived right across from us. Don’t they ALWAYS seem to live right across from you? He liked to fire that puppy up for niiiiice, loooong, periods of time. Usually around either 11:59pm or 6:01am. Take your pick. If that was the ex-husband of the woman who lived across from me in the apartment, I'm starting to understand why she wanted him killed.

For extra fun, there was the psycho next door neighbor who left a plastic bag full of dirt, sticks, and rocks on our front porch with a letter. It detailed how rude it was that we threw all of that stuff into their front lawn, and how we should have more respect for the people who live around us. Can I get a “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat thefrick!?” John really had to restrain me on that one. The bitch was crazy enough to gather every little rock, stick, and clump of dirt form her front lawn, put it in a plastic bag, and then write a note and drop that shit on my doorstep? What ever happened to, “Knock, knock… Hi, did you throw dirt on my lawn? No? Hm. I wonder where it came from?” I swear, I can’t believe sometimes that I’ve made it this far in life without punching someone right in the face.

The list goes on for our time in Tennessee.

We were gifted with an upstairs apartment neighbor who was the illegitimate son of Mr. Ed. There is no other explanation for the way his laughter sounded. Mr. Ed and that man's momma, TOTALLY got it on. He was also fond of climbing onto my patio and scaring the shit out of me so he could scale the building and reach his patio when he forgot his keys. Some people really just need to drink some Clorox.

Once we moved into a rental house, again, I was hoping for a fresh start. And really, there was very little that neighbors did there that was annoying. Unless you count vomiting in front of our house, throwing trash on our property, digging up our flower bed, or letting a dog shit in our front yard annoying. Nah, I didn’t think so!

We live in a new house now, in a new neighborhood. Occasionally a car drives by with music blasting so loud that the windows on our home literally vibrate and rattle in their frames. There is a stop sign there, right by our home, and I have thought about walking out there and gesturing to have them turn the music down, so I can talk to them. Perhaps ask them why they have it up so loud. Maybe even ask them what happened to turn them into such fucktards. But I doubt they have any hearing left, and my American Sign Language skills are limited to things like “all done!” and “ball,” so what would be the use? Maybe I should just stay up by my house and use that universal sign language, the Single Finger Salute. Or perhaps, just get a prescription for some good meds.

There’s also a little girl a bit up the street who had a screaming event in her front yard for about 30 minutes one day. “Elllliieeeeee! Come back! Fine! I don’t care if I never see you again! Elllllliiiiiieeee! Elllllliiiiieeee!!!” I was about to tell her I killed Ellie earlier that day for yelling.

Other than that, though, the neighbors are really mostly quiet, and not that annoying. And do you know what? It’s kind of boring!

I’m thinking of throwing some dirt and rocks into my next door neighbor's lawn, to see what develops.

Lotus is a full-time mother to one mischievous, toddler son and wife to a road-touring, musician husband. You can find her pontificating about motherhood and life at Sarcastic Mom , 7 days a week.