Our Next Door Neighbor

Our next door neighbor doesn't really like us. It isn't an intense hate, with lots of angry words, more like a cool dislike with silent, disdainful looks.

It's silly, really. We are the kind of neighbors that most people would want. No wild parties. No loud fights at 2:00 am. We do a reasonable job in keeping up with mowing our lawn.

But still, they don't like us.

It could be because when we first moved in, almost seven years ago, our son was still a baby. At the time, they had one of their grown children living at home. He would pull up in his car, at midnight, with the stereo blaring, go inside the house--stereo still blaring--and forget about going back out and turning off his car. The houses in our neighborhood are very close together. There might be 10 feet between our two houses. So, a car, which is sitting on the neighbor's front lawn, is really almost inside your house. It's not conducive to sleeping babies.

Several times we went over and asked...quite nicely...if they would mind turning the music down. Apparently, this was an unforgivable offense in their eyes, and they have disliked us ever since. At one point, when we were replacing our fence, I had to get them to sign a release that they were OK with the fence company tearing down the old, falling-apart fence that we shared, so that we could replace it. When I knocked on the door, before I had said anything, the lady opened the door and said, "What's wrong now!" Shocked, because we hadn't asked them to turn the music down for almost a year, I hesitatingly explained about the fence. She signed the papers and I left.

Years passed and one day the dog ran after the boys, because they had forgotten to close the front door when they went to check the mail. Tink eagerly followed them and upon seeing people next door, pranced over and began sniffing them. I heard the boys call that Tink was out and I retrieved her. The whole incident was about 10 seconds long. It might as well have been an hour to our next door neighbor, who quickly began shouting and reacting as if we had turned a vicious pit bull loose on her family. Never mind the fact, that out of the two and a half years we have had our dog, that was the only time she got loose.

Today, as I looked out my kitchen window, I saw someone walking their black lab off-leash. They non-chalantly watched their dog go into my neighbor's yard and poop right in the middle of the lawn. After it had done its business, they continued walking. That's really rude and disgusting, but not the point.

As I stared at the messy pile, I wondered, "Do I go and clean up dog poop, that doesn't belong to our dog, just to keep my wacky neighbor from thinking that our dog did it out of some sort weird vendetta that she thinks we have?"

I left it there. Hopefully, she'll see it before she steps in it.