Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
I hate my crazy neighbor. She really scares me. She is mean and ridiculous. I am not a hating person. I like people. At least I really try to. Because I am a nice girl. A good girl. It’s my thing. Anyway, the first time I met crazy neighbor was on the first day we moved into our house. She came over to welcome us, to introduce herself, and to meet us. I introduced her to our brand new puppy. We had just got him that day. I had a week off to move into our house and I also wanted that week to settle our puppy in, to be there for him. It was all planned out, the right thing to do. See, good girl. She seemed nice. She told me about the park at the end of the road with the ducks that I already knew about, and because I am a nice girl I smiled and nodded politely and thanked her for the info. She seemed nice for about 5 hours. At 10.30 when we went to bed and put our brand new puppy to bed in the laundry, he cried for his mum like brand new puppies do. She came over after 10 minutes to complain that she couldn’t sleep. 10 minutes! I mean how crazy! How mean and ridiculous. So being the nice person that I am, the polite, good girl that I am, I apologised, and nodded and went to the laundry to try and quiet down my puppy. My husband came in. “Sarah, we don’t have to do this, our plan was to let him cry it out until he got used to this. If you keep going into him that is what he will expect every night” “I know, I know…but the neighbor….” “Fuck her” he said (he being not so worried about niceties as I am). I can’t remember the details of what we did for the rest of the night. I think I may have ended up going in every 20 minutes or so until he went to sleep, but over the course of a week of settling in our new puppy into our new house, our neighbor continued to complain about his tiny whimpers. I mean moving house is a pretty stressful thing as it is. She made it hell. She complained rudely to us, the council sent letters, the council called us, the police came. The police came to our door at the end of our first week in our new house. They were confused because they had been called about a loud barking dog, led to believe that we had made the complaint. But when we opened our door, all was silent; our puppy was asleep as his crying at bedtime routine was now down to 5 minutes. When we explained about crazy neighbor and her complaints a light bulb went off in one of their heads… “Ahhh yes, your neighbor, of course” and then they left leaving us standing stunned in the doorway. It was then that we realised exactly the extent of the craziness that we had moved in next to. The police seemed to know her, and were used to her.
What bothered me the most was that she made me feel like I was doing something wrong; she took away my self assigned ‘good girl’ status. I traipsed up and down our street knocking on the doors of the neighbors’ houses apologising for my puppy. They all looked at me blankly, until I mentioned crazy neighbor, and then they too had their light bulb moments and started sharing their own crazy neighbor stories. The good bit was that I got to meet all my other nice, lovely neighbors early on, so far the only good thing about crazy neighbor. Over the last ten years there have been numerous incidents where she has tried to make our lives extremely difficult, and, like the fool that I am, the good girl that can’t stand the idea of anyone disapproving of me, she has got to me each time. I have let her get to me with her always absurd complaints. She wouldn’t know it though. On the outside I am polite, perfect calm, me. Smiling, friendly, approachable. On the inside I am a wreck. Even when she is not giving us hell and goes quiet for a while, she still gives me anxious butterflies in my tummy when I see her and an instant fear that she is about to ‘get us’ for some unknown offence. But as my husband says, what could she possibly get us for? I am, as I say, a nice girl, a good girl, it’s my thing.