I wrote this over the summer, but decided it should be here.
Our next door neighbor is completely paranoid. They have the only house alarm system on the block where most people don't even lock their doors. She's terrified of flying, so they bought a 42 foot RV that they use to drive to their vacations. In other words, a freak.
Anyway, they have two elementary school age children. She thinks that I am destined to run over her children with my car. Last year she complained because I was doing "360's" in our cul-de-sac and flying up the street. Actually, I was merely pulling a U-turn to park on the other side of the street and driving well under the speed limit. The only thing wrong was that I would break traction while turning, a feat made ever-so-enjoyable by the powers of a rear wheel drive car.
Well, this year she's back at it. Since I no longer drift into my parking spot (I have since learned that there are thousand-dollar fines for such an experience), she's content to harass me about my speed. Last month she confronted my mother about it, who didn't really want to deal with it. Basically, she said, "He's an adult. Talk to him about it." But I did get a brief synopsis of the complaints. "Flying up the street," "going to kill my children," etc. But also she added a new one. She asked if I could not park in front of her house because my car is ugly. That's just utterly ridiculous. I love my car.
Since said confrontation, I have made measures to annoy her further. I've made the extra effort to park our most hideous cars as close to her house as possible. Since killing her children is actually a somewhat serious ordeal, I have since slowed down tremendously. But every time I drive past her house, I will rev the engine to at least 4000 rpms. This gives her the impression that I'm just zooming up the street.
Apparently this has not assuaged her. Yesterday, as I got out of my car, she clamored out of her house and yelled, "Jeff!" as I started hopping to my house.
"Yes?" I replied, not turning.
"Can I have a word with you?" she whined.
"No," I said, then went to change. Minutes later, I heard the doorbell, then a knock on my door. Denying access since I was presumably changing, I got off the hook. Basically, my intention was to just agitate her more.
Finally, this afternoon she came to our door. Everyone else was busy, and since I was only ironing my shirts, I had to answer the door. Once I saw it was her, I decided the puppies needed to be put away, so I opened the door then closed it again. Once settled, the event began.
"I'd like to have a word with you," she started.
"Okay, go," I said. This startled her a bit, since I obviously had no intention of inviting her into the house. If we were going to do this, I wanted her to be as uncomfortable as possible. She was not wanted in my house.
She went on to explain how she thinks I'm a danger to all forms of life, flying up the street, etc. I went on to explain how I think it's perfectly fine and how nobody has been injured yet. I think it's a pretty good argument, but she obviously disagreed. My arguing style was pretty much designed to trip her up, playing off her expected strong points. She came into the argument expecting a civilized adult reasoning, expecting me to see things how she does, expecting me to have an epiphany. "Oh! I could really hurt someone! I better slow down." Instead, I gave her an insolent opponent, convinced that I was right as well. I mean, she obviously wasn't going to see things my way, so why should I let her off so easy?
"I guess you see nothing wrong with what you're doing and are going to make no effort to change, right?" she said, trying to weaken me up.
"Pretty much," I replied.
I have to admit, she had some pretty good strategies, such as, "I thought you were becoming a mature adult," and, "Don't you hold any value for a human life?" But things were not looking too good for her.
My personal favorite argument of hers was when she asked, "What would the police think about what you're doing?" to which I replied, "I don't think they would care, as I'm not doing anything illegal." That thought ended quickly.
Trying to get at something deeper inside me, she asked, "Why did you run away from me yesterday?"
"Because I didn't want to have to deal with this." (Read: you). "I have better things to do right now."
To this, she replied, "Well, so do I."
Infuriated, I said, "Well, let's go do them then!" and slammed the door in her face. I think that was the highlight of my day.
I don't think she really knew what to do. With a surprise attack from an invasion of privacy, she reopened the door. With the tone of a very angry mother, she started going off about how that was the rudest thing I could have done. By this time, she was completely in tears. Realizing that she would probably end up going back to my mother, I decided that things should probably be patched up. I wouldn't to force my mother to deal with this beast again. So I made the effort to make her happy by giving her a hug. That was actually pretty funny. "Don't! It's not sincere!"
So I asked her what she wanted. We settled the argument on the terms that I would drive slow enough that I could stop if a child jumped out in front of me. I made sure that's all she required. Funny thing, I've noticed that even my mother drives faster up the street than I do, it's just I drive louder. But we made no agreements on noise or ugliness. So just to get her out of my hair, that was that.
And that's why I slammed the door in my neighbor's face.
