BAD Neighbors & Squirrels

So sorry about your disgruntled neighbor and the change of date for your block party/Mother’s Day cue. I’m not even your neighbor but emotionally, this throws me off a little…I guess because so often the nasty-little-fleas get their way but don’t have the decency to be appreciative and say “Why, thank you - kind people - for your efforts…” A classic example of “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” (or am I mistaking “GREASE” for “inheritance”?)

Whatever.

I cringe when I think of having to put up with a lousy neighbor ever again but you can only go for so long before it is bound to happen. I’ve had some doozies in my time but am happy to admit that the families on either side of me right now (in the house I am soon likely to leave) are kind, generous, quiet, and into their own thing…which is divine.

As a tiny child I lived next to a family of torturers. Not entirely true, but they were rampant bully-children with absent parents who shouted endlessly at each other and were, generally, mean to everyone. My brother and I invented a protective barrier which became the cornerstone of our defense tactic: “knee popo”. We’d sit at the top outside landing of the steps to our 2nd floor apartment, looking straight across at the family of bullies on their 2nd floor landing and we’d bend our bare legs (wearing shorts in the summer time) and spread the flesh where our calves and thighs met at the underside of our knees and the effect looked (still looks) just like a fat butt – which we referred to as “popo” vs. any of the other more popular names – fanny, bottom, hiney, butt, behind, tush. We did this TO them – smugly, triumphantly, silently, the only way we knew how to say “BACK OFF, BULLIES!”. I was three. The reality of “Sticks & Stones may break my bones, but NAMES will never hurt me!” had not come into focus.

Learn to play nice.

We moved often enough and the next time we collectively disliked a neighbor was when we moved in next to Mrs. Nevz. The memory is vivid….my mother had arranged the loveliest knick-knacks on glass shelves in the window at the bottom of our stairs; there were two hand-painted porcelain cats and many colorful glass pieces. The sunlight in the morning, when I came down for breakfast, spangled beautifully through all of it making rainbows and colored spots dance against the walls and ceiling. Magic, for me. And there, in the center of this window, across our yard and in her own window, staring back from inside the soft-focus frame of my mother’s beautiful knick-knacks was the sour-puss face of Mrs. Nevz. Snarly eyes, a frozen frown, disgusted by happy kids, happy families…doing happy things. She sat in that window, staring us down, making us wonder if she ever left that perch or ever turned her head in another direction. As a family, we laughed about it. So when my brother dared me to dig the hole and set up stones for a mock camp-fire in her back yard, then dance around it with my Indian costume on and patting my mouth with my hand for the characteristically offensive “Injun” chant that was still [marginally] tolerated in the early 1960’s, it felt like the obvious thing to do to semi-taunt Mrs. Nevz. My thought was – how would she even see what went on in her back yard if she was always staring squarely through her window toward the window at the front of our house? But she must have had eyes on the back of her head because she was madder than mad when she called my Mom to REPORT me (my brother was innocent?) and guess who had to go over after Sunday school that weekend to apologize for being a BAD GIRL. Oops. Once, my Mom offered to cut back her overgrown bushes as a favor and, although she agreed to it, Mrs. Nevz was livid over the trimmed bushes as soon as my Mom completed the project. Hmmm. And like your “Mr. Disgruntled”, this woman was always working on her next disturbance, stockpiling her disgust and intolerance, never running out of it.

At another house years later – where we were tweens and teenagers and no longer dressing in Indian costumes – Mr. & Mrs. Terwilliger were on earth, living next to us, to make our lives more interesting! These were classically complainy, disapproving, older-than-their-age types who certainly would have preferred a family WITHOUT teenagers and since we were no dream-come-true family at the time we were not helping the situation. My favorite story about them was that Mr. Terwilliger actually WORE a long to-do list, safety-pinned to his shirt each Saturday by his significant (m)other – Mrs. Terwilliger – to keep him, their marriage, and their lives on track. (Secretly, I covet this method, but I would use post-its).

One more neighbor story – my sister was at a neighborhood party where suddenly this squirrel was running up and down the legs of the guests and as they shrieked “Aghhhhh!! Get it off…!” the woman who had the party was saying – “Oh, no…that’s a NICE squirrel – that’s Lolita!!” Well, she had befriended this rodent and shared food with it, named it and allowed it up in her lap…and anywhere…and expected everyone else to embrace Lolita similarly. But my sister was having a squirrel problem in her back yard at the same time and had started to gather those squirrels up into cages that she would take out to a nature preserve and kindly say bye-bye. So the neighbor lady shows up one day freaking out to my sister saying that Lolita is missing and accuses my sister of “getting rid” of her. Next thing my sister knows is that this crazy lady has gone out to the nature preserve and simply called out “Lolita!!!!!” and that squirrel comes running to her and is now safely back in the ‘hood…this was her way of asking my sister to stay away from Lolita in the future…let sleeping (creeping) squirrels lie…

Anyway, it’s seriously a miracle in my mind that any of us can tolerate ANYONE else…God knows it’s an exercise with a giant learning curve – from our siblings to our spouses and in laws to our children, our pets and – God forbid – our neighbors…so many diverse styles, needs, comfort zones, gobs and gobs of baggage, etc.

Kudos to you and the folks of Allard Blvd. for actually pulling this party off for 34 years. I hope people show up on the right date (but I don’t care if Mr. Grumpy has a good time).

And Happy Mother’s Day!!!

Ruby