Not the Water Thing

Some neighbours seem to want to be best friends and get disappointed when you aren’t really into the block party they want to throw on the next long weekend. They don’t really want to have a block party, but they are having a party which will be long and loud, so it’s best to get all of the neighbours behind them to avoid the inevitable call to the cops at 3:30 AM.

I like a neighbour that isn’t a lot of work to be neighbours with. You know the kind that you are on a nodding relationship with and every now and then you can have a nice conversation about the weather. I always tell them that if there is any time they need an extra pair of hands, don’t hesitate to come and get me. I know that the perfect neighbour will never come and get me, but will rely on his real friends for help. I’d still help, but it would be kind of weird.

We have been in this house long enough to have had more than a few perfect neighbours on both sides of us. They have all moved away, possibly because they wanted a neighbour that was more than the nodding kind. Their loss I suppose. The current neighbours on both sides are here for the long run. They may not want to be, but since they were foolish enough to buy in a sellers market and the homes they paid $400,000 for are worth $320,000 or less, they are staying.

I suppose they are nice enough. The ones on the right side of us are Muslim with two five year old twins. I exchange smiles with the lady of the house and she is nice to talk to…every now and then. She was involved in a tragic fire a number of years ago caused by a lovers triangle that resulted in her losing her children. Very, very, very sad!

Her husband is very nice and although he hasn’t quite mastered English, he is much better at it than I am with Pashto or Dari. He is of the opinion that I am an old man and insists on shovelling my walk even when I am in the process of doing so myself. He does mechanical and body work in his garage so his back yard is constantly filled with vehicles. I don’t care, we have a large fence in between us and for a guy doing body work, he is incredibly quiet.

The neighbours on the other side I have written about before in a couple of blogs, “Bob the Asshole” and “Bob the Assholes Wife”. Bob has disappeared from the scene, either through divorce, health reasons (death), terminal assholeness or it’s possible he is buried in the basement under a thin layer of concrete. The Assholes wife had spent a small fortune upgrading the house, having an arborist in last year to give the trees a cut and trim, major yard work, painters inside and out and they have just finished a kitchen remodel. It’s so recent; the old kitchen is still on the lawn.

I have never said a word to this woman. Well, I have said a word, but I’ve never heard a word from her. I’ve heard her yelling at her grandkids to “Get the Hell in the house!” I’m sure she is a lovely person. Well, I’m guessing she is a lovely person based on nothing. I think one of her daughters has recently moved in and maybe some old cat lady that is living in a trailer parked in the back yard. One of them brought two very large dogs and put up a chain link dog pen just by the fence under our bedroom window. So far they haven’t been noisy, and I am hoping they clean up the dog shit on a more or less regular basis.

I have the feeling that sometime in the not too distant future, I will be talking into a microphone saying something like, “She was really quiet, not the kind of person that would feed children to her dogs and poison the cities water supply. Okay, I kind of thought she might feed kids to her dogs, but not the water thing.”