People Open Up About Their Contestable Revenge Stories
32. My Kids And I Had A Jumping Party Before Leaving
“About 3 years ago I lived on the second floor of a 3 story apartment. My kids were quite young. 3,2, and 1. They were no angels but they were good kids. The floors would creak just by them walking. My old downstairs neighbors understood and didn’t complain once.
Then the new neighbors moved in. They would knock on my door constantly with the slightest creak telling me to keep it down. One day they went too far.
My oldest is borderline autistic. She’s downright terrified of loud noises and has trouble coping some days.
But she was starting to get interested in music so I bought her a soundtrack cd from her favorite movie, Frozen.
She was having a good day. She was swaying back and forth to her favorite song and attempting to sing it. I was proud of her for coming out of her shell.
Then all of sudden someone hit on my door so loud it shook like someone was trying to break in. Then I heard my downstairs neighbor yell ‘shut the heck up already!!!’
My daughter screamed b****y murder and ran and hid under my bed sobbing uncontrollably.
I yelled I was calling the cops and ran after my baby.
When the cops showed up I was still trying to convince my daughter to come out from under the bed. I told them what happened but it turned into a case of ‘he said she said’.
So they left. When my landlord came to follow up on it she told me to keep it down even if I had to keep my kids on the couch all day.
That was the last straw. We moved 2 weeks later. But before we moved I constantly played the donut man on YouTube for my kids.
It had two songs in it that had jumping and stomping in the song. I would dance with my kids and jump or stomp extra hard with the songs.
Like I said I’m not proud of acting immature but I was annoyed.”
31. I'm Tired Of Having The Spotlight On Me
“Last year, there was a tenant in the house next door to me that left their attic light on CONSTANTLY! Their house, their rules, right? Well… there wouldn’t be a problem if there was a shade or something on the window, but they had a mega-watt bulb in there and it was shining DIRECTLY INTO MY WINDOW!!!!
The first time I mentioned it to them, the guy said ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ so I pretty much followed him up the sidewalk and when he got to where he could see that side of my house, I told him to turn around and look up.
There was a ‘spotlight’ on my house!!!! I swear, I was able to take a shower at midnight without turning the bathroom light on! His response was ‘Oh,’ and walked into his house. The light was turned off 10 minutes later.
Two days later, the light was back on.
Three weeks after that, I left for vacation and when I came back, the light was STILL on!!! So, just this one time, it was on for 8 weeks non-stop! I pointed it out again. Nothing. The light stayed on.
I tried one more time after that, even suggested that if they didn’t want to turn the darn thing off, at least get a blind to cover the window.
Didn’t do a thing. I even wrote to his landlord. Nothing. So… I took action.
I have a very bright flashlight. I turned it on and positioned it in my window so that it was shining directly into their kitchen (that window had blinds, but they didn’t close them all the way).
My thought was to see how long it would take them to figure out how annoying having a light shining on them was, get the hint, and turn the attic light off.
Well, an hour after I turned that light on, there was a knock at my door.
It was the POLICE!!! These jerks called the police about a LIGHT!!
The conversation went something like this:
Me: Yes, officers, what’s up?
Cop 1: Do you know why we’re here?
Me: I don’t know. Could it be because I’m trying to be a good neighbor by helping the people next door light their kitchen?
Cop 2 (to cop 1): You were right!!!!
When they were walking towards my house, they noticed the huge spotlight on my house and figured that had something to do with it.
I told them that I couldn’t believe they had to come out for something that ridiculous and explained the entire situation… how I had that light shining on me for 2 years and finally had enough.
They then asked me if I would turn off my light if they talked to the neighbors and told them that they needed to either cover the window or keep the light off unless the room was in use. I agreed and immediately went to turn my light off.
About 15 minutes later, the neighbor was putting a giant piece of cardboard over the window. I couldn’t believe that they would rather live with cardboard covering the window rather than simply turning the light off!
The cops came back to me and asked if that was OK.
I said that was all that was needed. The neighbors claimed they didn’t know that the light was shining into my house! I had enough and told the cops that I had mentioned it to them several times.
So… the pettiest thing I ever did to get even with a neighbor was to assault them with light!”
30. Neighbor's Dog's Poop Came Back
“I was 13 years old. My family was in Army quarters at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.
We were up the hill in a six-plex. One of our neighbors was the French wife of a finance officer. They were nice enough, except that Madame had a poodle, creatively named Fifi, who she let out the door to do her business without supervision.
Fifi would come into our yard, take a big steaming dump, and then go home. We mentioned this several times, but our neighbor would just make a big Gallic shrug as if there were nothing at all she could do about it.
I was the oldest kid in my family, so cleaning poop up was generally my job.
Brilliant parenting by my parents-not much that I can’t do now no matter how yucky.
So the next time Fifi went p*****o in our yard, I was ready. I got a trowel, scooped up the turds, and placed them on the doorstep of Fifi’s home.
The turds were beautiful: brown outside, yellow inside, with a fluffy custard-like consistency. I was outside about an hour later when the neighbor lady came out of her door and slipped in Fifi’s finest. She got poop all over her shoes. And surprise! She was obviously going somewhere, because she was wearing a beautiful outfit, including a very fine pair of shoes.
She made a disgusted sound, and then, seeing me, said, ‘Oh! Did you see that?’
My shrug would have put Marcel Marceau to shame.
I also had neighbors who liked to throw a party now and then. No problem, I used to do that myself.
It’s easy. Don’t do it too often, turn the noise down around ten, and don’t do it when people have work or school in the morning. So I’m not hard to get along with. I often would let my neighbors know ahead of time when I was having a party (I think I only had two in 15 years that involved music or revelry) and that they were welcome to come by if they liked, and gave them my number if they needed us to quiet down.
That worked pretty well. Once in a long time, there would be music, dancing, and chatter in my yard, once in a while, one of the neighbors would do the same. Quieter after 10:00 PM.
But one time, some new neighbors had a loud, booze-fueled party.
The music went on until after midnight. People talked loudly. Do you know how there is always that one woman who shrieks at everything when she’s hammered? This party had three. At 2:00 AM the music came on really loud again for one song and people were loud and shouting and laughing.
Then it was just really loud talk.
You know what’s the worst thing to hear when you’ve been up late drinking and partying and are trying to sleep off a bad hangover? Your ill-rested neighbor mowing the lawn, then cleaning the pool while his best friend tries to play the accordion despite several of the chord buttons being stuck.
They were just lucky I didn’t know anybody who played the bagpipes.”
29. Cut The Complaints Or I Won't Remove The Box Truck
“My former neighbors (Oh, god! If there was ever a couple who needed to enter into a m************e pact!) and I each had our own driveway that butted up together; enough for two cars to park side by side.
Granted, it was somewhat tight on that portion of our driveways that was situated between the two houses but completely negotiable to even the casual driver.
My neighbor’s wife believed it was too tight in this location for her to proceed past a car that was parked fully on my driveway and complained about it.
Being a new neighbor and wanting to get along, my wife and I avoided parking in this area even at our own inconvenience. I also informed family members and recurring guests to do the same.
However, when I had uninformed visitors come over to my house and park in the ‘sensitive’ area, my neighbor would come out and start yelling at my guests.
Because she had a delusional take on the width of the driveway, she assumed everybody else had the same irrational perspective. This was not the case though. No one ever thought that they would impede the flow of my neighbor’s traffic in and out of their own driveway.
So they never gave it any thought.
Again, trying to be accommodating, I told my neighbor that it was impolite to confront my guests about where they parked their car. I asked that she and her family members, if they saw a car parked in this area, come and get me (Or another in my family if I was absent) and I will take care of it.
She argued with me telling me that it should be readily apparent that anybody parking in this section of my driveway would block any cars proceeding in and out on their driveway. So apparent (in her unreasonable brain) she said her confrontations were appropriate.
I told her she was 100% wrong (but I still wanted neighborly harmony) and reiterated that she only talk to me; never again to say anything to my guests.
I told her in no uncertain terms that if she did not comply with my simple request, I will buy an additional car and make that area of my driveway its permanent home; never to be moved. Well, it happened again (not surprised) and I made good on my promise to take the offensive.
I planned to purchase a beater from a junkyard but a friend of mine (just as outraged as I was) had an old box truck he said I could have as long as I needed it. I fell in love with it! It was big and intimidating yet within regulations for width and more importantly, totally fit within the boundaries of my driveway, albeit barely.
My neighbors never said anything to me because they knew why it was there. They tried a counter move by parking adjacent to the truck when one of them was home but it was a move I anticipated. Although inconvenient, I had to move the truck every now and again to egress my driveway.
However, more times than not, my neighbors were not home and all we had to do was swing around the truck on their driveway (as any experienced driver could do) to get in or out. That truck was there to stay until I saw a white flag.
Besides changing their parking behavior, they called the police. However, after discussing it with the police (and knowing they could not do anything anyway) they gave me a wink and a smile translating to, ‘More power to you!’
The neighbors had their overly-sized son try to intimidate me but I told him to do his worst and go pound salt.
They complained to the city (various departments) but there was nothing that the city could do except try to convince me to come up with an amicable solution. Again, when they heard my side of the story, the response was just about the same as the police accompanied with a required, but weak, ‘Well, we hope you would reconsider.’
The white flag came out about six weeks after the truck arrived. I agreed to remove the box truck if and only if I was promised that I would never hear a complaint regarding a car parked anywhere on my driveway. Moreover, not one comment to any visitor; I didn’t care if it was a Jehovah’s Witness or an Amway salesperson.
No one was to be addressed regarding where they parked on my drive. I promised them that if they did not abide, the next vehicle would be a fifth wheel with its own address.”
28. Nuisance Neighbor Lost His Garden
“For background, the way my backyard was, half abutted the nuisance neighbor and the other half my best friend.
She and I had a gate that joined our backyards so she and I could get together without having to walk or drive around the block. Her husband put it in after I moved there. That gate is important.
Her next-door neighbor was the same moron whose backyard abutted mine.
He was a real winner. He would take his leaves and throw them over her fence into her flower beds which was bad enough but what he did to me was worse.
He actually lived half the year in Brooklyn and came out to the island in the summer.
He also grew a vegetable garden which he was fanatical over. His yard was raised a bit, had a cement border and a chain-link fence separating us. The guy was a creep.
I had a cement patio and if I was outside reading, he would come out, water his garden and stare.
Fine. I put up a trellis and planted a couple of butterfly bushes and wisteria for privacy.
At some point, he decided that my plantings and trees were interfering with his precious garden and that’s where the fun starts. I had honeysuckle growing on the side fence.
It in no way was growing on the back fence so it wasn’t growing into his garden but while I was at work, he came into my yard and cut it down to the ground.
I also had an oak tree in the corner with some gladiolus planted around it and some bayberry bushes in front.
There was also a small birdbath. He decided that my oak was blocking his sun so he came in the yard while I was gone and started cutting branches. Not the ones hanging over his yard, but the ones clearly in mine that were supposedly blocking his sun.
When I confronted him he admitted to doing it and basically told me that his garden trumped my property rights and too bad if I didn’t like it. I called the police but if they don’t see it or you can’t prove it, tough luck.
Now I’m starting to about have had it with this guy.
I was a single mom then and worked a lot of hours. I drove a school bus so I was also in and out. He would wait for the bus to leave and strike.
Now I had three dogs. Two I couldn’t leave out because they were both descendants of Houdini but one, a lab I could. He had found some potpourri and tried to eat it, (he ate anything) and while it didn’t really hurt him, he did get diarrhea so he was banished until it was out of his system.
Now Tar (the lab) was a typical lab. Friendly, but dumb as a box of hair. He also barked if you were in the yard and he didn’t know you. It was during this time that my jerk neighbor decided to trim a bit more of my tree while I wasn’t home.
I come back later and poor Tar is leaning on the back of the house trembling.
My gate is wide open and my shovel, which was on my patio is also leaning on the house. I have no idea what was going on. I’m trying to calm the dog down and I look up and I can see my wind chimes and it all falls into place.
Creepy has gone into my friend’s yard, through her gate into her back yard, through the connecting gate into mine to cut back that tree but this time the dog was there and probably barked at him.
So he grabbed my shovel, hit my dog, god knows how many times until he was cowed and cut that tree.
Could I prove it? No, but Tar would make a wide berth past that guy’s fence and cower when he saw him so that was all the proof I needed. I had Tar checked out and other than being scared, he was fine and that was when I made my plan.
When the jerk went back to Brooklyn, I went to the store and bought six boxes of Kosher salt. I also bought three gallons of kerosene. I salted his precious garden and gave it a good dose of kerosene on top of it. Falls in LI are rainy, so they soak into the soil.
The following Spring, I put a small 10 by 10 garden next to my patio. I planted tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and some herbs. My tomatoes grew beautifully, I had so many I gave them away.
His garden? Well, the plants would start then shrivel up into a brown mass of death.
He kept asking me what I was doing to make mine so nice while lamenting his and wondering what was wrong.
I just played stupid. He never had a garden that year and never found out why. I put a lock on my gate and gave a key to my friend so he was never able to trespass.
Hurt my dog, will he? Fixed him but good.”
27. Removed My Mower's Muffler For The Wasted Neighbor
“I suffer from severe depression. Have for over 20 years. Five years ago a single mother of 3 moved into the house next door to me. Right from the start, she was extremely nasty to me.
I rarely left the house if I wasn’t working. Social anxiety made it hard for me to get out and do things.
My hardly leaving the house left this new neighbor reason to speculate as to what was going on in my house.
Every time I came outside, I was hit with a barrage of insults from said neighbor. Nightly, she would sit outside with another neighbor drinking heavily and cackling about her crazy neighbor.
(Me)
Her day off was always on Sunday as she was a postal carrier. She would stay up super late getting wasted on Saturday nights. Throw up wasted, to be exact.
Every Sunday morning, I would get the lawnmower out at 7 am and fire it up.
Her bedroom window was in the front and just feet from my property line. Needless to say, I spent a good amount of time mowing that strip of grass over and over again. Oh, did I mention that I removed the muffler from the mower?
She never got a sleeping day on Sunday for 2 years until she finally moved. What a horrible neighbor she was.”
26. He Said My Tree Was A Danger To Passersby
“I used to live at the far end of a quiet cul-de-sac, where the neighbors were pretty good. I had a job, driving a minibus, that involved me traveling to airports at random times of the day and night to collect/deliver holidaymakers.
One of the bungalows opposite me came up for sale and an oldish woman with 2 dogs moved in and almost immediately started complaining about my minibus being parked outside my house and blocking access to the end of the cul-de-sac, which seemed a little strange as my house WAS the last, so I pretty much ignored her.
She then managed to get herself on the Parish Council, where she mentioned me a few times, sadly for her, I had several friends (including a work colleague) on the council, who kept me informed.
I was told that she had spoken to the local community plod (police officer) about my van and warned that I should expect a visit.
Sadly, I missed his first visit, so he left a card for me, asking me to call him as the local Fire Service had complained about my minibus impeding their access in the event of a fire. I rang my cousin, who was a fireman at the local station, and asked him about it and he said to hang on while he spoke to the Chief Fire Officer (CFO).
The CFO then came on the phone and told me that they had not made a complaint and also that he was ‘not happy’ about the local plod saying that he had.
I called PC Plod and arranged for him to call the next afternoon.
The following day he arrived and I asked him about the Fire Service complaint and he confirmed that they had made the complaint. I got my phone and rang the CFO, then handed the phone to PC Plod, telling him that someone wanted a word with him, he took the phone, gave his name and number, and then went very quiet and somewhat pale as the CFO tore a strip off him and threatened to report him to his Inspector.
I heard no more about that.
Because I had to be up and about at all hours, I went to bed early-ish when necessary. One night I was in bed when her significant other started mowing the lawn, at 10 pm. I got up, dressed, and went to have words with him.
He said that I made noise early in the morning so he was going to mow the lawn. At this point, 2 of my neighbors, both with young children, came out and asked him what he was playing at and told him exactly what would happen to him if he started the lawnmower up again.
The final straw was that when she noticed that my bedroom curtains were shut, she would let her dogs out onto the drive, where they would just sit and bark. It drove me crazy, until one night (well after 10 pm) the dogs were in the drive barking and I couldn’t get to sleep, so I got dressed and went over and knocked on her door.
She answered the door and I asked her if she minded taking the dogs in as I was trying to sleep and there were neighbors with small children, in nearby houses. With a smug look on her face, she said that it wasn’t her fault that they were barking.
At this point, all my restraint fell away, I nodded and said that it was not really surprising that they barked under the circumstances. She asked me what I meant and I said that dogs were very sensitive to spirits and informed her that an elderly man and his son used to live there before her.
I then told her that the father had died in bed in the front bedroom and the son died in the garage (both true). She went a bit pale and took the dogs inside. The following week a For Sale board went up and a couple of months later she moved out.
As I read this back, I feel slightly ashamed of myself, but I can only take so much.
Last night, I remembered something else that she did. I had a conifer in my front garden that was close to the footpath and (admittedly) overhung it a bit.
So she reported me to the council. A jobsworth from the council came to the house and said that ‘someone’ had reported that my tree was overhanging and that it could be a danger to passersby. He looked at it and said that he would be back in a couple of days to ensure that it had been trimmed. I pointed out that mine was the last house in a cul-de-sac and therefore there were NO passersby, but he was adamant that it needed trimming.
I asked him to wait a minute, went into the garage, and came out with my chainsaw. I went to the tree and, starting at the bottom of the property line, I cut up as high as I could go, which was well above head height.
He stood there gaping and I told him that there was no need to come back as it was no longer a danger to his imaginary passersby, adding that I was sure that if there were any further problems, that the old bat over the road would let him know.
A couple of days later a mate and I cut the tree down, which I’d always intended to do.”
25. I Was Just Trying To Be A Caring Neighbor
‘I lived in a condo of 26 flats, my bedroom window facing the parking lot.
Practically daily an anti-theft car alarm would sound, mostly at night. From my floor, I could not establish which car it is, because no blinking lights accompanied the siren. A couple of times I dressed and descended to check – and meanwhile, the darn alarm would stop!
Other neighbors suffered too.
One night I returned home at about 3 AM, heard the all-too-familiar alarm, and discovered that it originated from the old car of a neighbor whose windows faced the opposite direction – far enough from the parking lot to be heard without being annoyed. Despite the late hour, I knocked on his door and played a role of a well-wishing neighbor: Now, I told him, knowing whose car someone tries to steal every night, I undertake calling his phone whenever I hear a car alarm so that he can run down and repel with the villains.
A sleepy guy mumbled that maybe he should repair the alarm. I replied that he doesn’t have to worry: whenever I hear a car alarm, I’ll call him any hour, day or night, because I understand that his dear old car means a lot to him.
The next day he told me that he had dismantled the alarm. I – and the neighbors from my side of the condo – gained good sleep, and I kept the reputation of caring neighbor.”
24. I Compete With The Party's Music
“Many years ago I had a young, single, female next-door neighbor who liked to party a bit.
That wasn’t the issue, as I was also a young, single, female. The difference was I didn’t bring my revelry into our home because of my daughter.
One evening my neighbor had a gaggle of friends over. No biggie. But they moved the party and music onto her patio.
Our patios are in the rear and with the sliding doors open (no air conditioning) the sound came right into adjoining apartments. They might as well have been in my kitchen. The volume of the chat and laughter increased with the number of drinks consumed. It wasn’t late so calling the police would have been overkill but I clearly couldn’t enjoy my evening.
So I put my stereo speakers in the kitchen and turned on some nice, classical music. Tchaikovsky, I think, maybe Swan Lake. I adjusted the volume to barely compete with their loud but boring pop and left home for an hour.
They were gone when I came back.”
23. They're Disturbed By My Running Water
“I used to tend a bar until closing, do bar cleanup then go back to the townhome where I rented a room. As soon as I got home, around 3 or 3:30 I’d take a shower, read in bed and fall asleep. My landlord came to me and said that the neighbors could hear the water running and it disturbed their sleep so stop the showering.
Now, I don’t know if anyone has considered how filthy you get tending a busy bar for 8 hours then cleaning up the muck after but I assure you nothing else was happening until I showered it off. I told my landlord this but he still wanted me to wait until after the neighbors woke up at 6.
So I did it. I came home and watched TV until 6 am, then I took my shower and went to bed. Yes, I was aware that my TV was on the other side of the wall as the neighbors’ master bedroom and that sound carries, especially the loud action movies that I so enjoyed watching as I waited for 6 am to roll around so I could finally wash my sticky night of work off.
I think it was just two nights of this until (surprise) I got a note to disregard showering issues, go back to what I was doing before.”
22. I Sold My House To Noisy People
“When I moved into my first house, the neighbors popped by to say hi and they seemed really nice.
Shortly after, we arrived home one day to find my neighbor’s car blocking our driveway. We parked down the road and I knocked on the door to let them know, politely that we plan on using the driveway so if they could keep it clean, we’d appreciate it.
He laughed and said no problem.
About a week later, he did it again and I knocked on his door again, asking for him to leave enough room for us to get our car on the driveway. He told me there wasn’t much space to park along the road.
I agreed with him but pointed out that by blocking my driveway, I was effectively adding to the problem on the road with my car.
Not long after this, I received an official ‘Neighborhood Watch’ letter (from my neighbor, the Neighborhood Watch representative for our area) stating that complaints had been received about the length of my front garden grass (which at the time was about 2 inches long).
The letter stated that my grass was likely to attract vermin and if I didn’t do something he would be forced to report me to environmental health. I responded by putting gravel down in my front garden.
He continued to park over my driveway on random occasions (about once per month) and I started writing polite notes asking him to stop and putting them under his wiper blades.
On one occasion, he blocked my driveway with my car on the drive and I had to go and ask him to move it so I could get out. It was extremely awkward.
One day I came home to a note through my door from the RSPCA asking me to call them.
When I did, I was told a complaint had been made about my cats stating that they looked thin, were being left out all day, and even on fireworks night. I invited them round to meet my cats. They did and when they saw that my cats are not thin and in fact, quite the opposite, have a cat door and permanent access to food and water, the only question they had left was to ask about fireworks night.
I told them one of my cats is fearless. He’s a little warrior who would rather sit outside and watch the fireworks rather than be kept in. The other two were hiding under our bed. I explained about my vindictive neighbor and the RSPCA lady told me it was a waste of her time being called out for this, but not my fault in the slightest.
Then my husband was suddenly unwell and the day we returned from the hospital, my neighbor’s car was parked over my driveway. I restrained myself from writing something horrible and simply left another of my polite notes on his car.
Something snapped in him that night because he turned up at my door telling me to stop touching his car.
I told him to keep his voice down and that he didn’t scare me. I told him he needed to stop parking over my driveway.
Truth is, although he didn’t scare me, he had completely worn me down. I hated the house I had loved when I walked through the door for the first time and it was all down to him.
I put the house up for sale and when I received an offer that was quite below the asking price, I checked the social media profile of the person who wanted to buy it. He loved loud music and was about to have a baby.
The walls were thin. I knew this from listening to him snore through the walls for all that time.
I accepted the offer and moved on, hearing through the g*******e that my horrible neighbor had also moved too about a year after we did.
I like to think it was the loud music and baby crying that did it.”
21. My Man Stood Up To The Bad-Mouthing Neighbor
“We lived in a nice apartment in Arizona; we love the complex, the neighbors. That is with the exception of, ‘Cracky’ the upstairs neighbor. I think we were quiet people.
My significant other and I were in bed by 8:30 pm usually because I taught school. We liked to get up early in the morning and enjoy our coffee together before I would go to work.
We called the upstairs neighbor, ‘Cracky’ because she was awake all day, then up all night.
At night, she would have Spanish music blasting, stomping around, vacuuming, her kid would be crying; this noise was all night long. She would run the vacuum for hours in the middle of the night. Friday nights, her husband would come home then there was a make-shift schedule.
They would go to bed at about two in the morning. Now, I had already spoken to ‘Cracky’ about the noise at night. We had talked to management about the noise. We had even called the police. Darn, do we ever hate to call the police.
My significant other and I are early birds; we get up on Saturday mornings, clean, and run errands. We are lovers of bagpipe music, also. We refused to break quiet hour rules; however, as soon as that clock struck 7:00 a.m. we cued the bagpipe music.
We didn’t have a little stereo; we owned a trailer park system, that could be heard across the park set-up. We installed it in our bedroom, which is directly under their bedroom, closed the door to the room. We then went out onto the patio with a smirk of joy and drank our coffee.
The upstairs neighbor came flying down the stairs. He yelled at us, ‘Turn the darn thing off. People are trying to sleep.’
My significant other had a smile and a devilish twinkle in his eyes, ‘Well, good-morning sunshine. This is what we people call daytime.
That is when the sun is out. That is when people are awake. When it’s dark and that thing called the moon comes out that is when people sleep.’
‘I’m gonna kick your butt. You smart mouth jerk,’ the neighbor yelled.
‘Good, I was getting bored living here,’ my significant other stood up.
This is the first time I think the neighbor had paid attention to my man. He is a hardened oilfield hand. He is nothing but tattooed muscle. The two of us have been friends since childhood; we both can clear a room in a fight.
The neighbor doesn’t say anything else, he stomps up to his stairs.
The music battle continues for a few weeks. One week ‘Cracky’ is respectful. She tries to be quiet. The battle was over.
We celebrated that Saturday morning by going to JB’s for breakfast. ‘Cracky’ was still crazy just quieter.”
20. You Can Find Your Kids' Toys In The Garbage
“About 20 years, after I asked my neighbors to keep their kids out of my yard and their toys, bikes, and skateboards out of my driveway and off my front porch at least a dozen or more times a week, I came home one day and there they were again busy playing away with my entire yard, porch and drive impassable again like usual.
I was so annoyed, because like usual when I asked them to move their toys, they told me to park elsewhere. Instead of getting out and cleaning it all up so I could pull into my driveway and then clearing all their stuff off my front porch so I could go into my gawd darned house like I normally did, I did as I promised the last time and reminded them again this time, and drove over it all.
I swear I crunched that bike under my tires. I recall hoping it did not dent or scratch my car especially when it was stuck under and dragged a bit as I ran over a skateboard breaking it in half, and other things ultimately ended up parked on a doll’s smashed head.
When the girl started screaming hysterically about that, I ripped the body off and handed it to her, and told her if she liked her baby, she should take better care of it.
Of course, the kids are screaming at me about destroying their toys, as I’m picking other toys up and shoving them in my garbage bin.
Then their mother comes out and wants to know what I’m doing.
EXCUSE ME? WHAT AM I DOING? MORE LIKE WHAT ARE YOUR KIDS’ TOYS DOING ALL OVER MY DRIVEWAY, YARD, AND PORCH WHEN I’VE ASKED YOU A THOUSAND TIMES TO KEEP THEM OUT OF MY GAWD DARNED YARD?
She wants me to stop throwing her kids’ toys in my garbage.
I tell her that what her 5 kids don’t pick up before I do will end up in the garbage bin and if they touch it, I will call the police for burglary as garbage is private property and what is left on my property is mine to do with as I will.
The kids race me to pick up their toys.
After it’s all cleared away, I take my garbage bin into the garage and I don’t set it out until 6 AM on the morning of the trash haul. Normally I set it out the night before, but not that time.
If they want their toys they can dig through the garbage before they go to school. To make it special for them, I put the dog poop in the bin with the toys too right on top.
They weren’t happy about that and paintballed and egged my home.
I sat right out there in front of them instead of running off like they did when I came out and returned the same to theirs.
After that, we lived happily ever after and never said another word to each other ever again.”
19. The Guy Never Sped On My Father-In-Law's Land Again
“My Wife was born in Atlanta, the youngest of 4 children in her immediate family.
When she was about 2 her Father (re)purchased the old family farm his Father had lost during the Great Depression and moved the family back to very rural Thomas Co, Ga to ‘the old home place’. It was on a dirt road with no nearby neighbors except for a family that owned all the land for a long way in every direction.
Well, there was this young man (not kin) whose family lived & worked on the next farm up that belonged to a cousin of my future F.I.L. This young man had an early 1960’s muscle car that he liked to race down the dirt road past my F.I.L.’s house when visiting his family.
He’d get a running start at the top of the hill coming off the paved road and fly by my wife’s family home. My future F.I.L. saw this guy in the nearby small town one day and told him not to be racing past his house again because his kids and their multiple cousins often played in the dirt road that crossed his land because there was so very little traffic ever on it, and that mostly various farm vehicles passed, etc.
Well, the young man took it as a challenge from ‘the old man’ (If you’ve ever seen Col. Potter on the MASH tv show my father-in-law was his twin). So one day as my FIL was working on his truck in his front yard he heard the guy’s car start winding up to race past his home.
Just as the car flew by ‘the old man’ stepped into the road with his 1911A1 45 cal pistol he brought back from the Korean war and with 2 shots he blew out both back tires on the boy’s car. Then he walked up to his window and told him that if he ever came across his land again like that he would put the next round through his rear window.
All this was verified to me by the boy’s brother and some 20+ years later when I ‘came into the picture’ I saw with my own eyes on several occasions that that guy would still race down that (still) dirt road until he got to the creek that marked my F.I.L.s land where he promptly slowed to a slow crawl which continued until he crossed the 2nd creek that marked the other boundary of the farm.
At that point, you could hear him wind up the engine on whatever he was then driving and race away, but he never again sped on my In-Laws property because ‘that old man’ made a believer out of him!”
18. Complain About My Garden? Get Stung
“Most people thought of Marguerite Lindenberry as a sweet, old-fashioned woman who gardened and hummed her way through the day.
She wore long cotton skirts decorated with small stitched forget-me-nots and sported anklets and black Mary-Janes. Think Mennonite school teacher or a Little House on the Prairie ‘barren’ aunt in her Sunday best. At least I think that’s what you should think. Clothing like that comes from a time and a place I know nothing about.
But I grew up next to her and learned gardening from books as she criticized my efforts and found them wanting. Her narratives were unending and fueled by a wave of hidden anger.
She grew wild blue phlox and collected porcelain cows. (Sweet, so sweet.) Vacuumed her chemical waste site of a lawn with an Electrolux.
Placed the twigs and leaves she decided originated from our trees in piles on our property. Sent registered letters threatening legal action unless we removed our ‘dirty’ tulip poplars. Complained ceaselessly about my shrubs, my perennials, my earth-shaking decision to plant deep purple impatiens instead of pale pink ones.
Marguerite Lindenberry was a jerk with a sister-wife aura, who directed a whole lot of hostility towards my begonias.
So I got her.
On the side of our property was an old ramp, built with railroad ties and filled in with chipped gravel. The ties were rotting; yellow jackets love to build nests in old rotten wood and they did.
I did nothing but avoid the ramp. It was only a matter of time.
One day, while she was dropping off a pile of twigs…
In the end, it was fewer than five stings and a registered letter. I was very apologetic and got rid of the nest immediately, but after that, I was more tolerant of her constant dissatisfactions.
Apparently, river birches are ‘undesirable trees, with erratic growth patterns and invasive, downright disturbing roots.’ And I had planted one. What do I have to say for myself?
‘I’m sorry ma’am. I didn’t know.’ And with that, I handed her a smile and walked away.”
17. Her Driveway Got Blocked By Snow
“We had a neighbor who lived across the street from us who was a real witch. After hearing the things she’d yell at her terminally-ill husband or her adult son or any of her other relatives who had somehow been induced to stop by, it was pretty obvious to me that it wasn’t just her neighbors that she hated.
She had a three-car-wide garage with a correspondingly wide driveway, even though she only had one vehicle (this was after her husband had passed away). When it snowed, she expected whichever of her male relatives were currently at her beck-and-call to clear the entire width of the driveway.
If it was just an inch or two of snow, a snow shovel would suffice. But once in a great while, we’d get deep snow. At that point, random-male-relative would arrive with a snowblower.
In addition to the snowblower, he also brought an apparently genetic lack of respect for other people, because the direction in which he chose to blow the snow was not—as would seem logical—onto witch neighbor’s lawn, but instead into the street…specifically, toward the end of our single-car driveway (which was a bit further down the street from her driveway), where it turned into a wide patch of ice.
Because the street had a bit of a slope upward in the direction you’d need to drive to get off our street in the winter, that patch of ice made it nearly impossible for a car to get any traction after exiting our driveway. It wasn’t just a nuisance; it was a dangerous nuisance.
Despite my husband having had words with her and with random-male-relative about the situation, it kept happening. Finally, since I was pretty sure that this behavior wasn’t legal, the next time that the snowblower was used to cause this hazard, I called the police.
Sadly—according to the cop—moving snow onto the street turned out to be a perfectly legal thing to do.
That news (which she overheard) seemed to please witch neighbor quite a lot. Unfortunately for her, that fact was very useful to me.
When her random-male-relative was done with his dirty work and gone, and the sun had gone down, I went outside with a nice, quiet snow shovel (we didn’t own a snowblower ourselves).
I removed the snow from the road in front of our driveway. In fact, I removed it from most of the streets between our houses. But I was very careful about where I put it…
I put it, very legally, on the street in front of her driveway.
From one side of her very wide driveway to the other, I built a ridge of snow about a foot high and a foot thick. I didn’t set foot on her property at all. The snow was all on the street, where the cop had very plainly said it was permissible to put it.
But once the twice-moved snow froze into a solid mass, there was no way she was going to get a vehicle out of her driveway. In fact, it took her quite some time the next day to get someone out to do the very difficult (no snow blowing possible) work of removing that ridge.
The only bad part was that it was a Saturday (it would have been much nicer if she’d been late for work).
Interestingly, witch neighbor never permitted her random-male relatives to blow snow into the street after that.”
16. No, You Can't Have A Pool
“For my daughter’s 15th birthday, we agreed to a party in our back yard, featuring 3 bands (one of which actually achieved some level of fame).
But, first, we checked with the town to find out what the requirements were. We then had our daughter print up flyers explaining when the party was and that there would be live bands. We had her distribute them to all the surrounding neighbors asking them to tolerate it for a few hours.
Well, literally two minutes into the first band playing (well below the DB limit), the police show up. We were given a ticket because a neighbor complained. We decided to fight it because we were complying with the statutes. Thus, I learned who the neighbor was.
Several months later, those neighbors put in a pool. A side of it was within two feet of our fence. The law required that it be at least four feet from the property line and any fence. So, I called the town zoning commission to complain.
It turns out the neighbor didn’t get the required permits to put in the pool and it had to be torn out. That was a very expensive mistake. In hindsight, I would have found another way to point out their jerkery.”
15. We Cut The Fence That Made Us Fight
“We bought a house on a cul de sac.
The neighbor on my left was the listing agent. In his paperwork, it was stated that the fence on our right side was 10 feet inside our property line and all parties knew this. So moving the fence to the property line would not be a problem, right?
Wrong. We had the property surveyed and notified the neighbor that we would be moving the fence. Oh no you’re not, was their response. Then started their harassment. Tennis balls were tossed at our dogs, screaming fits every time we walked into the backyard.
Then lawyers. Ours charged us for talking to the neighbors’ estranged husband (who did not live there). 45 minutes, and the guy told us he did it on purpose. To wrack up our lawyer’s bill. Then he pulls the Do you know who I am? routine.
We’d had enough.
So here’s what we did. My husband went out with a Sawzall and cut the fence down completely. No fence to fight over now. Secondly, we found out their lawyer was doing this as a favor. I called his office to speak to him.
He wasn’t in so I ended up speaking to a different lawyer that had no idea he was doing this. Spoke for 45 minutes, hum, getting the picture? Third, the husband was a public figure. I went down to the courthouse where his office was and spoke to his supervisor about his aggressive stance and using his job as leverage.
I got a written apology. And our new fence was built on the property line. And the real estate agent? Conveniently absent whenever I tried to talk to him. I believe he retired shortly after.”
14. He Thought I Didn't Know Anything About Gardening
“A couple of years ago I had this neighbor who basically had the perfect yard and landscaping. No grass, flowers looked like magazine photos, and the grass was somehow always the perfect length.
He gave unsolicited advice about my yard all the time. He played it as ‘being friendly’ but the condescension was obvious.
Well, it just so happens that one summer, he took his family on a three-week vacation. He’d arranged for someone to take care of his perfect yard while he was away.
After a few days, I noticed there was a thistle growing between a bush and his house. The person taking care of his property clearly wasn’t as much of a perfectionist and must not have seen it. This was my chance!
Every morning when I went out to water my flowers, I would make sure that thistle got a nice healthy drink as well.
By the end of the second week, the top of the thistle was now the same height as the bush!
About halfway through the 3rd week when I was out watering this now marvelous thistle, I heard a vehicle pull up in his driveway.
Before I could turn around I heard my neighbor’s familiar voice, ‘Keith what are you doing?!’ I froze.
He was back early!
I panicked and thought fast. ‘You uh, see that crazy weed?… I’m trying to drown it for you!’
Fortunately and unfortunately he actually thought I was that stupid because of the poor state of my lawn. He then proceeded to explain to me for the next 30 mins that you can’t drown a weed.
I will say though, I went to bed with a smile on my face that night!”
13. Big Cat Got Revenge For Us
“I went to high school for three years in a farm-focused part of Houston, back before it became the urban sprawl we know today. Some of my neighbors kept chickens, one had a goat, that sort of thing. And pretty much everyone in our neck of the county had dogs.
We had a cat ourselves when we lived in Dallas, but after the cat ran away and we moved to Houston, we realized if we were going to get a pet, it would have to be a dog. But this story is not about my dog.
About three houses down from us on the opposite side of the street, some neighbors owned a pair of mastiffs, big nasty brutes who could scare away just about anyone. The problem is that these dogs would get out every now and then and terrorize the neighborhood.
People would keep their kids indoors to avoid any chance of running into those dogs, who always traveled together as they moved up and down the street. One day, they got hold of my neighbor’s Yorky – I was not there but witnesses said the little guy was just in their way and one of them hurt the dog.
The poor neighbor called the police, who said they could not do anything since the two dogs looked just like each other and they could only act on the one who actually harmed her dog. So for several days after that, we lived in some degree of fear – the mastiffs got bolder and bolder, chasing kids and cars and forcing everyone to stay indoors for fear of them.
Now it happens we were far enough from even the suburbs that we got a lot of unusual animals passing through our neighborhood – skunks, possums, even the occasional armadillo, and twice even a deer. There was also this very big cat, which looked like a cross between a bobcat and a tabby on steroids – I figured a feral cat had some wildcat’s kittens.
Anyway, this big ol’ cat liked to saunter into our neighborhood from time to time, sun itself on a patch of road where the trees didn’t cover so the sun came through, and the cat would raise its head and stare down cars like a feline version of Clint Eastwood in his prime.
He never attacked any human that I knew about, but he did not hesitate to broadcast that he could take on anyone he felt like messing up. I felt his stare several times when I drove along our road.
So a few days after the mastiffs set hands on the Yorky, that big old cat we called Horse was sunning himself on the road, and the two mastiffs walked up on him, growling at him on two sides.
Horse lifted his head, slowly looked at each of them, then got up and walked off with the two mastiffs following.
I did not see either the big cat or the two mastiffs after that for several weeks.
But a couple of months after the mastiffs confronted the big cat, old Horse sauntered back into the neighborhood and took his position in that sunny spot in the middle of the road, warily watching cars pass him on either side.
He was missing an ear, his tail, and walked with a perceptible limp, but I never saw either of the two mastiffs again.”
12. Neighbor's Irritating Son Learned His Lesson The Hard Way
“My neighbor’s 22-year-old stay-at-home delinquent had a habit of sticking his head out of his attic room and yelling at the kids, mine included when they were playing.
This tended to happen on weekends when he was nursing a hangover.
Entreaties to his parents by the parents of the affected kids did nothing. Nor would he come outside when challenged by an irate parent. Then he called my daughter an awful name. She was 6.
I decided to deal with it.
One day a bright blue Rover Metro appeared outside his house when everyone was out. This car had a tax disc in the window and it was before the days of computerized insurance databases. It was therefore legally parked and all locked up.
Although roadworthy it looked a state with a long scrape down one side. It would look good sandwiched between their BMW and Toyota. In fact, it looked just like the one my friend’s sister was selling for £30 since it got scraped on a skip. However, this one was special. Someone had gone over the entire car with an indelible marker pen.
In foot high letters. Every panel had a neat statement calling my errant neighbor all sorts of bad names. At five pm his mum came home. She saw the Metro and instantly jumped into her car and shot off.
Five minutes later she was back with a can of black paint.
She tried to spray over it but someone had sprayed WD 40 on the panels and it had sat in the hot sun drying all afternoon. The paint wouldn’t stick. It was so funny seeing her on her knees desperately trying to cover up the abuse.
When the son and husband came home it all went down. It went on for weeks. The kids loved it. They would stand around it and read out the statements to each other, loudly asking innocent questions. Nobody knew who owned the car and the police refused to get involved as the car checked out as all legal. The local police knew it was community action because of the son, they wisely stayed out of it.
It had a sting in the tail too.
One day, about a month later there was a lot of shouting from Mum just after the post had been delivered. She had always accused the son of some kind of involvement and didn’t believe that he knew anything.
She was loudly calling him a lying little menace! Someone had sent the registration document for the car off in the son’s name. She was furious. This meant he was legally responsible for the car. It also meant he could deal with it but he was unable to move it due to a lack of keys.
Even if he did get into it someone had removed the fuel pump relay so it wouldn’t start. They ended up having to pay to have it taken away. I last saw it on the back of a truck and thought ‘Lot of car for £30.’ As for the son he became known amongst the neighbors and especially the kids as the Fiddler in the Roof.
He never swore at or even spoke to another kid on the street ever again in the time I lived there. You can always find a way back at someone if you think about it a little.”
11. Kid Pretends To Be An Angel But Got Exposed
“Circa 2001, neighbors were great people but used to spend every summer weekend at their beach shack, leaving the 18-year-old son home ‘alone’ – except he would regularly invite dozens of friends over and party until 3 or 4 am.
Many Saturday nights (Sunday morning actually) I would be out there at 3 am telling them to stop hitting the metal dividing fence and yelling obscenities at full volume. They were literally kids, so we weren’t afraid to confront them. One night I decided to go out almost without clothes (not a pretty sight) – wearing only a pair of briefs in a color that blended in way too close to my skin tone, and that shut them up, only for it to reoccur the following weekend.
Other neighbors were also annoyed. One rang the cops to report underage drinking, but turns out they were all 18, and 19 – 18 is the legal age in my state. We approached his father, but he told us we were lying, and that his son was a model student, and doesn’t drink.
So on went the weekly cycle of noise, foul language, and a huge mess of discarded cans & bottles in adjacent properties (even on my roof). Every time we called the cops, they’d come around and the wasted men would be quiet. At my wit’s end, one Saturday night I recognized one of the visitor’s cars as having failed a recent DECC (EPA) test, as my friend ran the local testing station.
He was one of the more vocal ones, telling various neighbors to f*******e when told to quit making noise, and would start that car up at 3 or 4 am and rev it to the limiter to get the exhaust to crackle and pop loudly. I waited weeks for him to get in and drive home after doing this, with the intention to call the cops and dob in a wasted driver, but he never did – he’d fall asleep and go home the following afternoon, sobered up.
When they’d all passed out wasted in the early hours one Sunday morning, I slid under the car and cut the oxygen sensor wire near the cat converter. He was a fool who had no idea about cars – other than paying workshops to ‘build’ them, so I knew he’d drive it around for weeks like that, with the check engine light glowing away.
Monday morning I rang the DECC hotline to dob in a polluting car with plumes of black smoke out the exhaust that was hanging around our local area. Sure enough, he got picked up. And sent for another test, which failed. The 2nd fine is much bigger than the first. Put his car off the road for some time until he paid it, and was a contributing factor in shutting down those parties.
But it doesn’t end there.
Same neighbor’s kid, several months after the parties stopped. Gets himself a Honda Integra. Fits a turbo timer, despite not being a turbo… gets some horrible stuffed up tune and a monstrous exhaust that makes it go ‘buck buck buck buck’ at idle, rather loudly – almost, but not quite a backfire.
He’d come home from the nightclub at 3 am, park it with ‘doof doof doof’ subwoofers pumping, on top of the horrible exhaust noise, and this would run on for 15 minutes. He’d go all the way to the back of the property to bed (in the converted separate garage) oblivious to the disturbance he was causing.
I go out one night when he pulls up, questioned the stupidity of a completely unnecessary timer, and asked him to turn it off to stop the unnecessary noise. He responds with ‘how does get screwed sound?’
So the next morning at 8 am (just into council noise permissions) I started drilling the old concrete shed slab on my property, right beside his garage, with the rotary hammer drill.
Then I ran the angle grinder up & down some old wrought iron. He drove onto the fence several times, but I couldn’t hear him over the lawnmower revving away beside me, the loud music coming from my new work shed, and the earmuffs on my head.
The following weekend he did the same, but I was prepared. I’d borrowed a demolition hammer to complete the removal of that slab I wanted going. Not only did he get rudely awakened at 8 am from noise, but I would also have just about rocked him out of bed.
Although satisfying on my part, and I did need to remove that old concrete slab, it still didn’t stop him.
My bedroom was right beside his driveway, and one night just after the 15-minute ritual, I heard some noise. Looked out the blinds and saw my neighbor from across the street sneaking back over to his house, tossing something into the skip bin on his lawn (they were getting demolition and building work done).
Some 12 hours later, at 3 pm Sunday, turbo timer kid is cranking the starter in his Honda, but it refused to fire up. He ran the battery down to the point where it would only click. I go out to get in my car to leave, and he asks me for a jump.
I reminded him of the last words he said to me and repeated them back to him. ‘How does get screwed sound?’ Got in my car and drove off.
Came home about an hour later, and sat with my neighbor across the street having a late Sunday afternoon beer on his upstairs balcony.
We’re watching turbo-timer kid looking aimlessly under the bonnet of the Honda, willing it into firing, but to no avail. It was then I spotted the yellow foam filling the drainpipe posing as an exhaust, and it was firmly set. I looked down into the neighbor’s skip, spotted the can, and put 2+2 together.
I asked my neighbor if he knew how obvious the can of expanding foam was, right on the top of his skip bin, and he just grinned, saying it could be any of the neighbors, and how would he prove it.
Eventually, the kid’s parents come home, as they usually did every Sunday evening, and the dead Honda is blocking the driveway.
His father goes to look and scratches his head too. The boy and his father pushed the Honda across onto the grass, reversed the family SUV in, then pushed the Honda back, and hooked up the jumper leads. After several tries, it still wouldn’t fire.
We went downstairs & called his father over. Again, we told him the kid was annoying the neighbors. Father still claimed his son was an angel. Until we told him to look in the skip at the empty can, and then in his son’s exhaust. After 15 minutes of digging the foam out, the car finally started, and the parents finally believed the neighbors.
The kid was made to apologize to every neighbor nearby. Finally, we had peace in the neighborhood on weekends again.
Some of my actions, and those of my neighbors, might have been overly petty, but when you have a severe lack of sleep caused by morons, sensible judgment gets clouded way too easily.”
10. Their Complaints Aren't Valid Because We Didn't Have A Stereo
“We had a neighbor in the townhouse next to us. Every time she went to work, her kids would blare music. One would sometimes kick a ball against their wall as well. The music was so loud and full of bass, the tv on the opposite wall was vibrating.
We complained. And complained. And complained some more.
So, (ex) hubby decided to play the game as well.
We don’t have a stereo or radio. We had three computers and one huge subwoofer and set of speakers. He placed these on the shared wall in the afternoon.
(After management/landlord went home for the day). He likes dance/party music. I went out with the kids to the park. He followed but had the music going full tilt.
We did this for a full weekend and boy was the neighbor annoyed. (So were a few others…) They called management and complained.
We showed management our living room. He didn’t know you could play music on a computer. Since we had no stereo, they got in trouble for filing a false report.
This went on for a few more weeks until we complained to the office. (Public housing)
Well, it stopped quickly. Her kids were evicted, except for the youngest son. The other kids were not on the lease and she refused to have their income count as part of her income. (Which would raise the rent) The noise went down and we had a quiet, if angry, neighbor.”
9. File Complaints Against Me? I'll Be A Snitch Then
‘I despise my neighborhood HOA. I owned an HOA management company for 18 years and did HOA legal work for over 30 years. In 2007 I warned them of a problem. They ignored me and got caught in a legal battle that made only 125 of the 450 homes actual members.
I’m no longer a ‘member’ yay. Let’s just say I have been at war with idiots for 13 years and I have been very vocal about it. I’m still vocal about the methods they are using to try to trick people into ‘joining’ the HOA.
We had one Board member. I will refer to him as goat face man. He came on the Board at a time of peace. He decided to create a war. I was stopped in a grocery store by another Board member who told me I was in danger from goat-faced man.
I only knew him as the nice man who found my dog one time when she got out. I did not know that he came by my house every day looking for violations of the non-existent rules in our documents.
At Christmas, I put out a 10k Christmas display.
People come from all over to see it. He had the HOA send me a letter calling my property a dumping ground for trash and rubbish. War erupted. He bragged about it at the annual meeting. Believe me, war was a mild term. And no, there were no rules about anything I had done and my 5k nativity was not trash and baby Jesus is not rubbish.
Okay so maybe sky diving Santa is questionable but not to children.
Since I am no longer a member, there cannot be war as they can’t say crap to me. In fact, I bought an 8-foot bird for the front yard for them. Everybody’s heard about the bird… it’s really obnoxious.
I have 147 varieties of plants in beds xeriscaped areas, a beautiful flagstone swale that prevents flooding for my whole area, etc and the bird is just awful.
Backtrack. 10 years ago my neighbors and I agreed about fences and sheds. She was on the Board. When her part was approved she voted to not approve my part.
War ensued and we built our sheds but our mutual fence plan died a quick death. One day I ran an extension cord to my shed and she called code compliance (over an extension cord).
Code came out and made me hardwire the shed. Both our sheds were on the side of our houses.
Hum, we were both in violation of the code. No sheds are allowed except behind the house. They had other violations with their shed. At that time I did not have 50 k of xeriscaping etc in my backyard. I said Ok I’ll just take down my fence and roll the shed on metal rollers into the back yard.
No said Mr. Dial from Code. They can’t do that due to trees. Just leave each other alone and we won’t enforce the rule. That was easy, I had not called code on them. They told them the same, my neighbor and I wrote emails about it.
For 10 years the sheds have been there. Their house had sold twice. Two more neighbors within 6 houses have barn-sized sheds on their side property. In all, I have identified over 150 code violations just driving around. Google Earth will add more.
Suddenly code sends me a letter giving me 10 days to move the shed or be fined 1000 a day.
They said an anonymous complaint was made. Mr. Dial is gone and even though they admit they have known it was in violation for 10 years, a formal complaint means enforcement. But the complaint was only against my shed. (No, it is in like-new condition as far back as it can go on my side yard.
Others are right up front in multiple colors.) It cost me 2k to move it and destroyed 250 sq feet of the xeriscaped yard in the back of my house. Code has advised me that if I make a complaint, they will enforce code on any other offending property.
I put out the word. Either anonymous fessed up and paid me my cost (as I’m sure it was HOA retaliation) or we were going to have the most code-compliant neighborhood in Texas as I was going to make complaints on every violation in the neighborhood.
No one fessed up. Naturally, I thought it was goat faced man so I drove by his house. He has two sheds in his side yard. I hate to say it, I was delighted. One is massive and he has a tiny backyard. I don’t think even one will fit.
Now it may be petty to be the self-appointed snitch on code violations and I have 150 identified, but… I feel PETTY good about it.”
8. I Dumped The Bottles At Their Porch
“We had idiot neighbors one time – the previous people were lovely, an old-school family who baby-sat the whole street just about… but all things must pass, good and bad.
The new people were of a ‘better’ class, and never let anyone forget it.
First off, they stripped out the old house, which they’d bought outright, and turned it into a modernized version, but with a fake, even older style facade… you get the idea.
They did all sorts of shenanigans, the builders were pretty nice about it, it wasn’t really a noise issue (ooooh but the finials on the gutters had to be JUST SO, and the windows had to all be thick glass with angled edges, never mind the fence needed fixing and raising…) anyhow, they finally finished, and then they had a big housewarming party – but no one in the street was invited, just their snotty suit-wearing friends with expensive cars.
Well, fine. Nobody cried over it, and life went on.
Then the son had his eighteenth birthday, same kind of deal, all his uptight chums from the most exclusive college came and talked and talked…I have worked in jails and I have worked with dispossessed communities, but have NEVER heard such filthy language.
Repulsive, privileged brats and their various princesses. They sat around babbling till the early hours and screeched off in their expensive cars, and the son and his parents went off early to go on a three-day holiday, yachting or something…
Still, you can’t judge people on that – but that next morning, I found broken beer bottles all up and down the dividing fence.
They were knee-deep, and there was quite a collection – sadly, most were broken, so I couldn’t really return them for the deposit….
I could have been really annoyed, but no no no, it’s far simpler to act on these things – so I got my gloves and shovel and a bin and picked up every single bottle… and then DUMPED THE WHOLE LOT ON THEIR FRONT PORCH.
And you know what? It all got cleaned up in the next day or so, not a single word was ever said.
They’re long gone, and are not missed.”
7. Condo Folks Shamed The Noisy Woman
“I lived on the bottom Condo on the big golf course in Laguna Niguel California and it was in the ’90s.
I lived there for 25 years total and this was in the middle of my time there. It started as a retirement place but as the older folks passed away or moved to the rest of the homes, younger folks bought and some rented the places out for income.
We had new neighbors in the upstairs condo 2 over from me. Renters!
Two college-aged girls and one had a Marine partner and they had the outer bedroom. She was a screamer when they hooked up, and it was so loud and obnoxious. In the middle of the night, she shook the building with wails and staccato yelps, and whiny screams. They had several sessions every single night!
It was darn embarrassing and many times it started the coyote packs howling from across the canyon and it was a predictable sonic mess and I thanked my lucky stars when the Marine was finally deployed. Her ritualistic voice was annoying and very obnoxious. But she got another partner, another Marine, darn!!!!
I had my buddies over and they would laugh and joke about her cartoon-sounding screaming, and the bed hitting the walls, and such. Intolerable.
Then I started going out with a divorced Lady with two young children and they stayed the weekend as I was teaching the kids how to swim and then surf.
They were scared from the weird wailing and would jump in bed with her and me and my personal life suffered.
I had a sound recording studio and it was very soundproofed so I put a king-sized bed in there and we all slept in it and had quiet.
But the daytime drama was getting me and the other neighbors edgy!
Then I got one of the new Samplers and it was way cool, it had a microphone and you could sample 9 seconds of sound and play it back on the keyboard and you could transpose it and pitch shift it and add reverb and echo and it was so much fun and musical too.
So one weeknight I sampled the screamer, I had the mic set up in my neighbors’ upstairs balcony and it worked beautifully and it was her to the tee.
‘AHHHHHHHYEAHHHHHHH YAYAYAYAY HEHHEHEYAYEHHHHHH OHHHHOEY!’ Darnest thing I ever heard. My neighbors left notes and called her landlord all to no avail!
‘AHHHHHHHHHHYEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH’!
She was going to her car once and I played a couple of seconds of it and she was looking around and dumbfounded. Her distinctive moans were apparent.
So on the weekend, I set up a big speaker on my patio and had the sampler hooked up and when she wailed I played her back and it shut them up as they were on the balcony trying to figure out what was going on.
The coyotes loved it too.
Her parents stayed a week and I played it at night for them – very late, haha – and I even wrote a song with her screams as the backbeat. It was a cool riff and my buddies busted a gut when I cranked it up in the cassette player in the car or the beatbox!
Finally, she moved out and the condo folks of unit A had a party in celebration at the pool that weekend and I brought the sampler and my song and the moms covered their kids’ ears as I let her rip.
I still have it somewhere and I have been listening to the hundreds of tapes trying to find it.
The song was called ‘Organic Jelly’!
I am desperately looking for it as it is on a cassette and the sampler was sold years ago!”
6. They Didn't Know The Problem With The Boat Was An Easy Fix
“About 7 years ago I bought a ‘go-fast’ boat. A 1990 Checkmate Vision 221. Even though it was 24 years old at the time, it was in excellent condition and I snagged it at a very fair price.
I must have been around 57 years old then and had wanted such a boat since I first saw a Donzi when I was 18 or so. It was a long time to wait.
After I got all of the licensing requirements squared away, I was ready to go.
It was a Saturday and oppressively hot, around 95 degrees, but I wasn’t deterred. I brought plenty of water, a sandwich and headed to the biggest lake in Connecticut; which was about an hour away.
To say that my expectations were exceeded is an understatement.
The boat looked beautiful. It ran excellent. Sounded better. And I had a spectacular time running up and down the lake… Looking at the beautiful homes, enjoying the sun, and testing my driving skills.
It was later in the afternoon and I was headed back to the boat launch facility.
I was maybe a mile away, and pretty much worn-out, when the engine cut out and stalled. And it wouldn’t restart.
Unfortunately, I was relatively close to shore and there was a breeze pushing me towards land. Before long I was up to the shoreline with tree branches hanging over and inside the boat.
I had opened the engine hatch to see if anything was obviously amiss but it all looked good. I had also called both of the Marinas on the lake and left messages to see if they could come to tow me in. And had even telephoned the Department of Environmental Protection, who patrols the lake and is responsible for our waterways, but was told there was nothing they could do.
I kept trying to start the boat. It would eventually start but run horribly and then would stall. And the exhaust smelled terrible from the engine misfiring.
Boaters are generally a good crowd and more than willing to lend assistance. But being on the shoreline and buried in trees, no one knew I was there.
So Good Samaritan help was not very promising.
I should mention that I was around 75 feet away from someone’s dock. And there was a pathway leading up a slight hill to what I presume was a lovely lake home. I could not see it because of the trees.
It was very tempting to inch my way over to the dock since I was getting scraped unmercifully by the tree branches. But it wouldn’t have been right; intruding on someone’s property.
Every so often I would try to start the boat. Eventually, it would fire, run horrible and loud for 5 or 10 seconds and then stall.
And that smelly exhaust!!!
Maybe after my 5th or 6th attempt to start the boat, a slight woman about 75 years old appeared on the dock… And just screamed.
The gist of her yelling centered on the fact I had no business being where I was, my boat was loud, obnoxious, the exhaust smelled foul and I was ruining their perfect Saturday afternoon.
The screaming and yelling I could deal with but her sentence structure was punctuated by frequent use of curse words. She was letting it fly about every third word. It was probably the foulest tongue lashing I ever received. And please understand… I’m no shrinking violet.
After she finished her tirade, I did my best to remain calm and just said; ‘Madam, do you honestly believe I want to be here in this situation?’
Before she had a chance to retort, a lovely family came slowly cruising along the shoreline and saw I was in need of help.
I gave them a wave.
Ms. Jerk’s husband had wandered down a bit before looking thoroughly whipped and beaten. He never said a word. But as soon as he saw these potential Good Samaritans he became quite animated and started jumping up and down and waving.
Because I’m certain he wanted me to get my boat as far away from his house as humanly possible so he could get some peace and quiet and so his wife would shut up. Sorry!!!
These good folks threw me a tow line and had me where I needed to be in about 15 or 20 minutes.
I tried throwing the Dad a couple of twenties so he could treat the kids to ice cream. But he said no… ‘Just please pay it forward.’ And I have… Several times!!!
Since that event, I’ve been back to that beautiful lake many times.
And somehow I’ve always remembered exactly where that woman’s house was located. And despite my seemingly kind and conservative nature, my lack of pettiness, and inherent evil, I have been unable to restrain myself from ‘buzzing’ her dock at about 65 or 70 mph. Somehow it’s given me a lot of personal satisfaction each time…
Oh… the problem with the boat? It was an easy and cheap fix. Because of the long run that day and extreme heat, the electronic module inside of the distributor started shorting out. Melting actually. When I got home the boat started immediately since it had cooled down.
But the problem was pretty easy to spot. And it cost about 75 bucks and an hour of my time to fix.”
5. Generously Gave Our Trash Cans To The Neighbor
“I had just moved into my very first house. Pride of ownership and what-not. We’re serving pizza to my brother and friends who helped us move.
The doorbell—(my) doorbell—rings, and I cheerfully go answer it. It’s a guy I don’t recognize. Must be one of the neighbors, here to welcome us to the neighborhood! I open the door wide and greet him with a smile.
‘You ran your truck all over my G.
D. lawn and ruined it,’ Slouch McSneererson spits out at me. My brother, who happened to be just over my shoulder at the time, had been driving the truck, and he had gone up on the curb a wee bit to back it into the driveway.
Bro and I walk out with Slouch to assess the damage. Trying not to make enemies on my first day in the neighborhood, I say, ‘Of course, I’ll be glad to do whatever is necessary to fix it.’ It’s a rut in the boulevard strip.
I understand not being happy about it, but sheesh, it’s pretty easy to fix.
‘You’re not touchin’ my G. D. lawn, not after I dumped three thousand dollars worth of water on it to get it to grow!’ Ol’ Slouch grumbled. Okay, so what did he actually want then?
I wasn’t going to offer him $3,000 for a stupid rut. First, I don’t care what he spent on the water bill, he watered his whole lawn, not just that one spot, and second, you pull up the sod, level out the dirt, put the sod back down.
$20 to throw a little extra dirt, fertilizer, and seed in there to make it better. Nope, Slouch just wanted to complain to me about it. Establish his place as better than me, I guess.
Now, both my wife and I have jobs. So on trash day, one or the other of us puts our trash cans at the curb like everyone else, then when we get home, we pull them back into the garage.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. Slouch catches me as I’m starting to haul the trash cans back to the garage. ‘Your G. D. trash cans were in the middle of the road all day.’ I look around, like, they’re lying right here on the boulevard strip where they belong.
‘I kicked ’em back to the grass, ‘cuz they were in my way.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, thanks, Slouch. I appreciate you watching out for us.’
‘Didn’t do it for you! Keep ’em outta the street!’
Kinda hard to do when there’s no specific time for the trash to be picked up, there’s no one at home to watch for it, and telecommuting hadn’t been invented yet, but… okay, whatevs.
Several more times, Slouch helpfully informed me when my G. D. trash cans were in the G. D. road, and in his way.
Then one day, I came home and one of my trash cans had been flattened. Like one of those magicians’ top hats.
No credit was taken for it, but I knew who did it. But it was one of those rubber ones, so I stood in the circle and pulled the sides up like a pair of pants, then clambered out of the trash can and took it to the garage.
This happened 3–4 times.
Then one week, one of our trash cans disappeared. Interestingly, the McSneerersons suddenly had one more trash can in their possession than they had before, and it looked startlingly like mine. I told myself they must need it more than me, being more trashy people than we were, and let them keep it.
(Oh, one night I did sneak over there on trash day and put my name on it with a Sharpie. Just to needle them.)
They did other things to demonstrate their value to the community. Bottle rockets launched at other houses, breaking into garages to steal lawnmowers, breaking into cars to steal radios (not mine this time, but only because I kept mine in my now-stoutly-locked garage).
When the For Sale sign went up in our yard, they vandalized that! I’d have really thought they’d be happy we were moving out, they seemed so disturbed by our presence, but whatever. I didn’t mention it earlier because it didn’t fit in the rest of the narrative, but these were some really racist, bigoted people as well.
They’d host backyard picnics from time to time, and as the darkness fell and the empty beer cans increased in number, and the bottle rockets started flying, you’d hear various disparaging comments about the various ethnic groups they were forced to work with and such.
Well, we got a few people looking at our house, and one young couple decided they wanted to buy it. They made a very attractive offer on it, and I was inclined to accept it, but first I spoke with the gentleman. Essentially, telling him that we’re glad to sell to him, but feel he should be aware that the neighborhood is very white, and there are a small number of people in the area who won’t be happy to see a black couple moving in.
He smiled and said he was aware that the neighborhood was lily-white, and that racism was a fact of life for him and his wife, and he wasn’t worried about anything. Indeed, he was a big man—bigger than me, and I’m pretty big—and pretty solidly muscled. If anyone could stand up to Slouch McSneererson, this guy could.
So moving day finally arrived and we had a crew in to box up and load everything. I gave them instructions, though: the place we’re going, you contract with a trash hauler, and they give you your wheelie bins, so we’re not going to need the trash cans moved. Just leave them in the back of the house.
We filled them with all the trash we were leaving behind, including the perishable contents of our refrigerator and freezer. The truck pulled away with all our stuff, including our vehicles. But we stayed in the house for one last evening, ‘camping out’ on the floor.
We got up very early the next day to catch our early flight out. Miraculously, in the middle of the night, our missing trash can apparated on our front lawn, as if it had been there all the time! Ol’ Slouch thought he was getting one last dig in, apparently, as now we’d have to haul a dirty old trash can with us to our new home.
He didn’t know we were getting a taxi to the airport, nor that we didn’t need the trash cans anymore.
While my wife was getting ready to leave, I hauled that trash can and the ones in the back of the house, full of all our left-behind stuff, including the now thoroughly stinky contents of our fridge and freezer, and left them on Slouch’s front and side porches, with a paper taped to them saying, ‘You appeared to need our trash cans more than we do.
Enjoy!’
I like to think that he believed them to be empty and kicked them, simultaneously hurting his foot and dumping garbage all down his front porch steps.
Not proud of it. But I do giggle like a schoolgirl when I think about it.”
4. I Yanked As Many Flowers As I Could
“For a couple of years, I lived in Toronto, Canada. I was four when we left and this happened the day we were moving. For the two years that we lived there, the older kids next door liked to terrorize my younger brother and me.
I no longer remember what they did to us, but when we reacted they would jump into the family car that was always sitting in the driveway and lock the door. Their mother never did anything about it, or even once came outside to see what was happening.
However, one thing the Mom of bullies did care about, big time, was her flower garden. It was in the front of their house, full of beautiful, healthy flowers because she spent hours tending it.
To stay out of the way of the moving activities, my brother and I are outside, neighbor bullies are doing whatever they always did to us, our parents are busy with moving activities and no knew/cared what was happening to us.
We are on our own. We react as much as a three and four-year-old can and once again, they jump into their car and lock the door.
So four-year-old me ignores them, walks past them to the sacred, well-tended flower garden, and starts yanking up beautiful, healthy flowers by the handful using both of my angry little fists.
It’s amazing how many flowers can be pulled up in just a little bit of time. Then I ran home and pressed myself against the wall by the open front door because I was pretty sure I knew what was coming.
I didn’t have to wait very long.
Sure enough, in the blink of an eye, the bullies’ mom comes dashing over to our house, storms in the front door, stops for a brief moment to glare down at me with a look that could kill, stalks on into the house, and confronts my parents.
I don’t remember what she said, but I remember watching her gesturing wildly, back-lit by the sun streaming through the windows, while my parents just stood there, surrounded by moving boxes. Knowing my father, I am pretty sure he slid his tongue over to the side of his mouth and was biting on it to keep from laughing.
I don’t remember much after that except that I didn’t get in trouble with my understanding parents.
When I think back on the incident, I find it interesting that, even as a four-year-old, I knew exactly which button to push.
And I still treasure the memory of how powerful I felt as I yanked up those flowers!”
3. Motorcycle Guy Had A Word With Me And My Brother-In-Law
“Many years ago, fresh out of the military for a few days pass. Sitting in the lounge with my brother-in-law and we both read comics.
You know the kind, Archie, Superman, etc.
We were both militaries. Him special forces, me at the time, a wannabe special forces. (I got there eventually)
So reading comics was a way for us to relax. Very calming. Anyways, the street in front of his house was very narrow.
The street was about 600 to 700 meters long with his house near the end where the road made a sharpish kink to the right and then left.
The street was mostly always quiet, with hardly any vehicles, and mostly populated with kids enjoying a game of soccer or cricket or simply throwing tennis balls back and forth.
So enter stage left and some jerk bought himself a large motorcycle and would now race up and down the same street scaring the living crap out of the kids. We, my brother in law and myself watched this happen twice and thought of ways to stop it.
He was wanting to stand in the road with his gun and take out the idiot. Me? I’m into revenge tactics and know many ways to enforce a judgment.
So one afternoon, about 10 minutes before the rider would do his next 80km to 100km ride down our quiet street, I took a roll of toilet paper and strung a length from our fence across the road to the fence of the next yard.
Pulled the paper as tight as I possibly could without it breaking, and went back to reading a comic.
Not too long we hear this bike come screaming down the street. We jump up and rush out to see the show. Surely the jerk could see something white hanging in the air across the street?
But no! He was still getting to speed when all of a sudden, he threw the bike down on the tarmac… bike one direction and him another. Shrieks of breaking fairing and bending tearing metal. In a few seconds, it was all over. I casually ripped the toilet paper up and bundled it into a pocket while my brother-in-law walked over to the stunned rider who was trying to sit up.
No broken bones or anything. He wore a full-faced helmet with bikers gear on incl boots. I saw my brother-in-law speaking to the guy. He picked him up by his shirt front and shook him violently. All the while threatening him. He dumped the rider unceremoniously to the curb and walked nonchalantly back to his house.
His neighbors all came out to see what the commotion was about.
Long story short… the sounds of kids playing and shouting and screaming were back to normal. We were starting to run short on comics and planning another excursion to the bookstore. Never did hear another bike in our street.
The word got out about the bike incident though. No cops ever came around to investigate either.
My brother-in-law was ex Selous Scouts. Not one to mess with.”
2. She Can Only Type From 6 AM To 10 PM
“For two years we lived in a second-floor walk-up. The apartment on our left was a Japanese family who were very nice, helpful people. Okay, sometimes a member of the family would come home late at night without keys and hit on the door so somebody would come open the door for him, but that happened maybe twice a year.
The apartment on our right (adjacent to our bedroom) never seemed to keep the same tenants for more than a few months.
One year that apartment was occupied by what seemed to be some sort of student co-op. Three or four late-teens, all-male. This was mostly okay, but not always.
We were woken up at oh-dark-thirty one night by loud music from the room next to our bedroom.
I knocked on the wall as a suggestion they should quiet down. This got a couple of knocks back, but the talking didn’t quiet down. We had a large dictionary, roughly 6″ thick.
I picked it up and slammed it flat against the wall as hard as I could. BAM!
The talking stopped instantly and didn’t resume.
Another time these teens had invited some girls over and were partying. The room next to ours seemed to have a couple: a man (talking in a normal tone of voice) and a girl, who was giggling loudly.
It was Saturday night, so a little partying was understandable, but this was well after 2 AM.
I pulled on a bathrobe, went over, and knocked on their door. I said, ‘Tell the girl in the smaller bedroom to either come across or move it to the living room.’
It was nice and quiet by the time I got back into bed.
There was another building behind ours. The apartments faced opposite directions, so their bedrooms were only the width of a driveway away from the bedrooms in our building.
It was summer, so we had the windows open to get a little cool air at night.
My wife was in the spare bedroom typing (manual typewriter) at maybe 10:30. The doorbell rang. It was the police saying they’d had a complaint about the noise.
My wife told them what she was doing, and asked when it was legal to type. They told her between 6 AM and 10 PM.
She said, ‘Okay, then. I’ll stop typing. I can get back to it at 6.’
The senior cop got a big grin and told her that would be fine.
She set the alarm, and at 6 AM she got up and continued typing.
We never had another noise complaint after that.”
1. Neighbor Hates Cats So We Bought A Dog
“My neighbor and I were the only non-cat owners in the street so our gardens were used as litter trays. I had a super soaker filled with a stinging nettle infuse which I used to use for fertilizer, it really stinks.
The neighbors complained that their cats were coming home stinking of something they couldn’t place. It wasn’t really effective at keeping them away but it made me feel better. My neighbor confided in me one day that she trapped the cats one time and took them to the city pound as strays.
If the cats were chipped it would cost the owners to get them back. We eventually bought a dog (not because of the cats) who was really territorial and once ended up in a bloodbath which wasn’t what I wanted but when the owner complained I explained I wasn’t the one letting my dog roam the streets.”
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