Tags
guns, hot tubs, humor, Mr. Rogers, parenting, scary neighbor
Aussa Lorens, the Hacker Ninja Hooker Spy, has just got to have the most interesting life on the interwebs, or at least the best prompts. In addition to being hysterically funny, as always, her latest post My Neighbor Keeps Women in His Basement asked readers the about their own creepy neighbors. Here was my answer.
My daughter and I were heading home from the movie when the police stopped us at the entrance to our little slice of McBurbia. They said there was a Situation. I explained that I absolutely had to get home or in about nine months there would be a Situation at my house. My son and his girlfriend had left the theater before us and were undoubtedly back at the house already. You could practically see the hormone clouds from the bottom of the hill where we were stopped. In fact, I could look up that hill and see that the only lights on were in the spa room. You know, the one with the hot tub that I tried to get the last owners to take with them because we were from the Midwest. (We do hot dish, not hot tub.)
I tried to tell the nice officer that I wasn’t ready to be a grandmother. Almost two hours went by. The spa room dimmed, as if the only lights left on were those under the water surface in the hot tub. I started picking out baby names. When we finally made it back to the house, two innocent (but slightly damp) teenagers insisted that they had just been sitting around wondering what kept us. And hey, how weird was it that neither of their mobiles had registered incoming calls. Or texts. LOTS of texts.
Next day I discovered that our next-door neighbor had met some process-servers at her door with a display of the weapons that her gun-dealing current gentleman caller kept around. Now, our neighborhood was like some Walt Disney version of ultimate suburbia, so this neighbor was a bit… different. The day we moved in, she had come over to make sure we weren’t anything undesirable like Asians or Jews. (I told her she’d hit paydirt– we were both, and were thinking of renting out the basement to a black and hispanic couple.) In my defense, I didn’t know she kept an arsenal in her house. A week later, we met again when we arrived home to discover that she was just cutting down the last of our row of beautiful old trees on one side of our yard. So she could keep an eye on us.
A few weeks went by after she ran off the process servers. I was over in the next town picking up my daughter when my husband called and casually suggested that we might want to stop and grab a latte somewhere. Could this be the same husband who would wait in Burger King’s interminable line for a crap cup of coffee rather than pander to my addiction to overpriced caffeinated beverages with fake Italian names? “Who is this really?” I asked, figuring that pod people had also mastered the phone system. Just then my phone buzzed a call from my son. He said that people with automatic weapons and SWAT signs on their backs were pouring through our bushes toward our neighbor’s house. He wanted me to tell his father, who was standing in the picture window, drinking a cup of awful coffee and watching the show, that maybe he should get down.
Sadly, they took my poor neighbor away and some accountants moved in instead. There went the neighborhood.
Who was your creepiest neighbor ever?
OMG! This is hysterical! It cannot be true! Tell me that you made this up! Ahahahahahahaha!
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Sorry, the comment above was from me – Alex. I was signed in as Urban Sketchers Chicago.
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See, this is why I don’t have a TV. With a life like this, who needs one?
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I can’t believe you left all this for a life abroad.
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Well, that was clearly a mistake. Although the castle we lived in down in England did have an actual shooting range in the armory (!), nobody ever made threatening moves toward my vegetation.
Once I did see about twenty armored police and one incredibly adorable cocker spaniel (unarmed) surrounding the escalator at the airport. Then a few minutes later, they were all in line at Starbucks. I got in line behind them and asked what had happened. Apparently, someone’s purse dog had jumped the queue and dashed through security. I guess the pup didn’t take off his shoes and put his laptop into the proper bin first, because the soldier said that they had to take the dog into custody or close the entire airport. In England, they take dogs very seriously.
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About a month after I moved to Switzerland I was on the phone with my dad when I heard what sounded like an approaching army. I looked out the window to see tanks rolling up the road towards me. Exercises. They didn’t stop.
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AWESOME… I stopped by because I know Aussa… well, if anybody can truly say they know her…
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I’m so jealous! I live for Aussa blog post days. Thanks so much for stopping by.
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no… thank you…
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Hahaha! And it is just as entertaining the second time around, love it! And thank you for the shoutout 🙂
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I could probably just do a blog post to your prompt each week. Except for the part where I don’t work with, date, or deliberately encourage crazy people. Or ghosts. Okay, I would totally encourage the ghosts… [insert graphic of Haley Joel Osment saying “I see crazy people”]
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Good heavens .. can’t stop laughing! I’ve had some “interesting” neighbors in my time, but have missed the glory of being able to photograph a swat team in action … sigh. Funny, my sis still lives in the midwest, and she chooses the hotels she stays in according to whether they offer hot tubs or not and was a little disappointed I think when she found out that there are very few in Italy , so I though it was a midwest thing … funny as usual and a nice read first thing in the morning!
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Oh, no– we Midwesterners know it’s a saltwater thing so I didn’t exactly broadcast that it was in our house. In fact, one daughter was on her second or third visit before she opened the door at the end of the laundry room and saw the gigantic (12 seater) hot tub. After that, she kept asking if I had any other secret rooms, like where I cooked the meth…
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LOL! Now that my friend is a funny story! A 12 seater no less … I can just see the visions of “What’s my decadant Mom up too now!” thoughts going through her head.
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Well, I did have a French (Parisian) swat team jump me once, but they were very nice. So, in France the swat teams are nice and the service people are arrogant. I was visiting with a friend and the first day we saw a Black Mariah screaming up the road with the blue lights flashing and that warbly siren going. Neither my friend, Peter, nor I had ever been to France and so Peter, taken with the police truck, stepped into the road and started taking pictures. I’m here to tell you that I now know that is illegal in France – no pictures of policemen or police vehicles. So, we were spotted and the Mariah came sliding to a stop in front of us and disgorged a complete swat team who efficienlty surrounded us. The police are very efficient in France. Sigh. How to make a great first impression in a new country. They were shouting in French, which neither I nor my companion understood, until the lieutenant spotted the small Canadian lapel pin on Peter. “Ah, vous etes Canadien!” Sure, whatever, I’ll be Swedish if you want me to. “I’m sorry you cannot take pictures of Policemen in France.” At this point he explained the law and took our film. He apologized and then took out his wallet and paid us for the film. Admonishing us not to repeat our faux pas, he hollered in French at the swat team, who all turned, ran back to the Mariah, jumped in, and took off with sirens screaming.
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I love France! The meter maids wear designer uniforms and the police drive Citroëns. Who knew you couldn’t take pictures? These days, I’ll bet every mobile in France has broken that law..
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Aussa is a riot! You have some interesting and funny neighbors. Strange, as we who live in apartment buildings here in NYC we never really even know those who reside right next door to us!
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That’s true. In fact, I lived across the hall from you for two and a half years and you never noticed…
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Seriously, that woman is AMAZING I want to just watch her creepily from a window to see what happens to her on a Tuesday.
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Join the rest of us Aussa-stalkers. I swear, if we’re ever arrested the jury will rule it as justified.
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