Some lines you really just don’t cross. When it comes to relationships, children, and pets, there are boundaries. Some neighbors apparently don’t understand this basic principle. And it can get wild. Content edited for clarity.
The Really Crazy Ones
“So one night, my wife and I heard the neighbors next door arguing. All I could hear was the woman yelling, ‘Man up,’ as her husband screeched out of their driveway. It was around 8:30 pm and we were both tired. I had to work at 3:00 am. We chuckled at their plight and went to bed.
Fast forward, it was 10:30 pm and I felt like I had just fallen asleep when my wife woke me up.
‘There’s someone outside screaming your name. It sounds like they’re breaking the windows on your truck,’ she said panicky.
I was so confused, and tired, and thought what the hell is going on? So I hopped up and went to the front door/living room windows to peer outside. Once in the living room, I could hear her screaming my FULL GOVERNMENT NAME. My name is actually pretty cool to say, just not in this context. So I was hearing my full name being shouted at full volume over and over accompanied by another loud gritty sound. It was the sound of a shovel hitting concrete, the sound of a shovel breaking glass. It was so bizarre, what was wrong with her?
Next thing, I called her husband. He had always been cordial and had helped me with light repairs on my vehicle. We would say hi when we saw each other etc., so I felt confident calling him and asking him, ‘What’s going on? Your wife is outside screaming my name breaking windows.’
He just said, ‘I know. She’s drunk.’
Obviously, this was not quite the answer I was looking for. So I asked again, ‘What’s going on? Why the hell is she screaming my name?’
He replied with a bald-faced lie, ‘I don’t know man.’
I ended the call since he was not helpful at all and I had a situation to deal with. And since he just up and left his unruly wife to terrorize us, the cops were called. She managed to scream and then another one of my other neighbors’ names ONCE. Frickin’ ONCE when she screamed mine 30 freaking times. So here we were, the woman’s husband who knows where, my wife worried to bits, my name being screamed, and another neighbor’s name yelled too. I had never experienced such idiocracy.
Fast forward—- it was 6:00 pm the next day, I was off of work finally and I called the husband again. I wanted to see if he was ok, if she was ok, and of course, why the hell she was screaming my name. The neighbor answered, and I asked him, ‘You alright? And is she home yet (from jail)?’
He said they were fine and thanked me for asking, so I got to the nitty gritty. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t something like this.
‘Well you know she’s just mad because there was this one time you didn’t say hi,’ he admitted shyly, ‘and there was one time I said hi to you and you didn’t say hi in the morning. Then one time I came home with the boat and you guys had just got home. I texted you for help backing it in and you didn’t help. And one time the suburban broke down in the (his) driveway and you didn’t help her push it,’ and he didn’t stop there.
I was almost too stunned to speak, but I questioned him, ‘I didn’t say hi? In the morning? We always chat it up when we have a chance. If I’m running to my truck it’s because I’m hurrying to work! And a text about a boat? When I get home I take my pants off. And your car broke down? In your driveway.’
He tried to claim it was on the hilly area in front of our properties and she pushed it alone. This woman is unfit and unhappy, she’s physically incapable of that, so this was ludicrous.
I was irritated and said not too calmly, ‘YOURE THE HANDY ONE, I’m of no use to y’all with broken down things. Look, we need to communicate, if I don’t know what’s wrong then I can’t fix it,’ referring to the obvious communication breakdown, ‘I’m going through a lot of shit and I don’t need people screaming my name in the middle of the night. There’s no excuse. That was insane behavior.’
We said some awkward peasantries and then hung up. I WAS FURIOUS.
He shot me some weak text saying, ‘You’re right. I’ll be better, I’ll communicate.’
I basically responded with a whatever, leave me alone. I was so mad, I’m still mad about it. The only reason she knows my full name is because I asked him to be a reference when I had a background check done for a job. He must have shared my name with her.
Needless to say, I say hi even LESS now. They’re not very good people so I don’t feel too bad about it. Just the other day I heard her yelling at her son, some REALLY disrespectful things, and she’s always talked bad about him. I’ve lived here for 6 years. He was 10 when we bought the house. When she first met us she said something negative about him wetting the bed. And we were thinking who says something like that about their own son? They are just awful.
That incident really hurt me and to know that people are sitting in the house next to me, secretly hating me cause they are miserable, well it’s terrible. I’ll never bother with them again if I can help it”
A Grudge Worth Holding
“As a New Yorker moving to the country, I looked for years for the perfect rural property. I love animals, so I wanted a property where I could let them loose and not have to worry about them running into traffic, etc. I finally bought a house at the end of a dirt/gravel dead-end road, backing up to a state park.
Shortly after moving in, my elderly mother asked to move in with me. I hired a neighbor, let’s call her ‘Edwina,’ who lives just about a hundred feet before my front gate, to help take care of my mother.
I ended up getting a puppy soon after moving in—- a chocolate lab—- who grew up to be, literally, the best dog I’ve ever run into. I really think if I believe in any religion, this dog would be a saint in that religion. I really felt like this was an advanced, enlightened being in a dog body.
Edwina would come up to my house nearly every day to care for my mother and would pass this dog who, of course, considered her to be a friend, part of his pack. I tried to keep the dog confined to the property (it is over 11 acres) but he sometimes liked to slip out the front gate and go say hi to the other dogs down the road and visit the neighbors.
One day, when he did this, he ran up to Edwina to greet her, and she did the unimaginable. She called animal control and had them come to take the dog away— to the dog pound, where he might have been killed. There was no way she hadn’t recognized the dog, so I was completely confounded. Fortunately, my friend got to the dog pound and retrieved him.
About two weeks later, she did this again.
In fact, another neighbor of mine reported to me that she had called animal control even before the dog left my property and insisted that they wait until the dog left my property and then catch him and take him to the pound. It sounds bizarre and I don’t know if it’s true, but who knows? I wouldn’t put it past her.
Obviously, I fired her from taking care of my mother. And I have never spoken to her again. And that was, I think, well over 20 years ago.”
Caution Karen Ahead
“Years ago, we lived in this cul de sac. We shared a communal drive with two other homes. My son was only 3 years of age at the time. The next-door neighbors had two grown children. They were also shameless space hogs.
Anyway, when my son was little, we would often be outside, as my son loved to play outside, both in the back garden and out front. And of course, I was always out there with him.
Well, the mother who lived next door, and I didn’t like her from day one because she was this old chav type who obviously got lucky and came into a bit of money, had a really nasty habit of speeding up that drive at around 40mph, when she should have been going more like 10.
And one afternoon, my son was playing very near to the drive, sort of around the flower bed beside the drive, and I had been not far from him, and out of the blue, this psycho came zooming up the drive even though she must have seen my little son. She didn’t slow down at all.
I remember being so shocked at first, just staring at her as she parked her car, and literally wanting to go over there and kill her. She didn’t say a word to me. Didn’t apologize. Nothing. And she had to have seen my son. It was as if she did it deliberately to be passive-aggressive. On a THREE-YEAR-OLD.
These low lives had pulled lots of other awful stuff before, including trying to bully us into letting them have part of our property so they’d have more space, which we said no to, so there was already tension between us. But after that incident, I never spoke to any of them again. And I kept my son well away from the front drive area from that point onwards.
I will never, ever forget how fast she went up that drive. I’ve never known anyone to go up a drive so quickly. Absolutely disgusting. How would she have liked it if I had done that with her own kids if they had still been small?
I honestly cannot believe some people.”
