When we moved houses recently, our new neighbors on either side came over with invites, coffee, and stories about our house’s history and the neighborhood. It was lovely, but I couldn’t help wondering what I would find to write about. I thought wistfully of the good old days back in America: guns, swat teams, plenty of blog fodder…
So in honor of ThrowbackThursday, here is a repost of a blog from a few years ago.
My daughter and I were heading home from the movie when the police stopped us at the entrance to our little slice of Seattle 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 at our house 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 gay 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?
anisioluiz2008 said:
Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
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barbtaub said:
Thanks so much for the reblog!
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Sue Vincent said:
My creepiest neighbours? The ones with whom I shared a party wall but whose names I didn’t know after fifteen years…
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barbtaub said:
Wow! So far, you’re our winner.
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Sue Vincent said:
I don’t out-creep yours though (although my neighbours may think I do 😉 )
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renxkyoko said:
There’s always one in any neighborhood, I guess…… the creepy one in ours does not mow his lawn…. the ones on his left and right have beautiful lawns /gardens…. this one has grass one meter long.
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barbtaub said:
Well at least you have some warning, and something to talk about to the reporters when he finally snaps and goes postal… (Instead of the usual, “Oh, he was always so polite and quiet.”)
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Bun Karyudo said:
An accountant! My goodness, how terrifying! (I’ve never been good at math, to put it mildly.)
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barbtaub said:
I know! And there were two of them. They kept their grass mowed, brought hot dish to neighborhood parties, and always bought cookies from the girl scouts. We had to move.
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Bun Karyudo said:
Truly shocking! (I’m shaking my head in disbelief as I type these words.)
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Mary Smith said:
I don’t think I’ve ever had creepy neighbours. Maybe they think we’re the creepy ones.
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barbtaub said:
Do neighborhood children double-dare each other to knock on your door and run away? Do their parents tell them to cross the street before passing your house? If not, I think you are at best rank amateurs at creepy-neighboring.
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TanGental said:
You win Barb. We did have an expat Scot called Hastie Stoddart who was anything but and a boy called Graham who after he split with his girlfriend went out every night, came home drunk and put Karma Chameleon by Culture Club on repeat as he fell into a stupour – that is until I tied him up and tattooed ‘twat’ below his nostrils. Otherwise pretty normal.
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barbtaub said:
You own DIY-tattoo equipment? Has it crossed your mind that perhaps YOU are the creepy neighbors?
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TanGental said:
Hmmm, actually that might explain a bit…
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Elyse said:
Yours are way worse than any of mine have been.
But just yesterday, my current neighbor was out on her deck at 7 am when I took Duncan out. She was going back and forth between weeping hysterically and screaming hysterically. Once I realized she was on the phone and thus not in any danger, I left her to it. We each have 2+ acres with houses far a part…
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barbtaub said:
Still, it must have been a traumatic experience for poor Duncan. Have you considered therapy?
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cravesadventure said:
I could write half a book on the creepers I have lived next door to – think you move into a nice, quite hood and then you really start figuring out what hood you are living in – ha! I think the weirdest one was ending up in dog court with one set of neighbors. Happy Weekend – Enjoy 🙂
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barbtaub said:
Dog court? What is that?
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cravesadventure said:
It is a hearing. The neighbors had 1 to many dogs within county regulations. Since we lived near them we were requested in dog court because they want to defend themselves by getting a breeder’s license to breed a certain dog breed. That is the reason for the extra dog – they had 3 males and added a female. The smell and the noise was unbearable at times. The neighbors unfortunately lost because we did not put in enough complaints. We move out shortly there after.
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