Petty, Party of One
I always need a nemesis and the guy across the street fits the bill so nicely.
As Fletch headed up the stairs after breakfast, I heard him pause on the steps, then snort derisively.
“What?” I asked.
“Have you looked out front yet?” he asked.
No, I had not, as I was busy drinking coffee and trying to alter my unbroken losing streak on the New York Times game Connections. The fact that I am hard-pressed to figure out even the most rudimentary connections between the words explains why my SAT language scores weren’t much better than my tragic math scores. I also perpetually fail at HuffPo’s Pyramid game, which is a nice double-shot of failure to start my day. That said, I won’t beat myself up too much because I always hit Genius level on Frase by Forbes. Of course, I’m a subscriber and there’s always a hint in their daily newsletter, so…
Anyway. Out front.
I believe I’ve mentioned how much I dislike the people across the street, largely because I always need a nemesis and the guy over there fits the bill so nicely. In theory, I should like these people. They’re one of the few neighbors whose whereabouts I couldn’t guess on January 6th. Plus, they had a Pritzker sign out front prior to election day, and I am a huge fan of our governor. (As a long-time Illinois resident, it’s refreshing to have an elected official who’s not incarcerated.) Yet it’s clear that this guy isn’t one of the driveway dads who gather on Friday afternoons to discuss how bad most of the subdivision lawns look. Even Fletch is invited to those gatherings, although his attendance is infrequent at best.
This particular neighbor’s crimes against proximity are minimal, albeit annoying. The guy has a classic muscle car and his passion is getting up at 7:00am on most weekends to rev his ear-splittingly-loud engine for eight to ten hours at a stretch. The noise shakes our whole house. People have sent the police to complain before, but I swear it wasn’t me. I would totally tell you if it were. At a minimum, I’d have posted a Reel to Instagram.
Usually he makes his noise when I’m at the pool in the summer, so I honestly don’t bear a lot of witness to it, yet that doesn’t make it okay. He also has a mini-bike, which he will occasionally take for a verboten spin down sidewalks and across parkways, regardless of HOA rules. (If you’ve not witnessed an adult male ride a child-sized bike, I highly recommend it. Once.)
Our fabulous neighbors next door will film it when he does, and they take the footage to the board meetings as evidence so he can be fined. We like this family so much. They are kind, they are quiet, they have great dogs, and they helped us get Snappy the Tortoise back into the swamp earlier this year. You really don’t think of tortoises (or turtles, I don’t know the difference) being so bitey, but JFC, this guy was terrifying. Legit thought I would lose a toe, as I was barefoot and his standing long-jump was impressive.
What began to push me into the Not a Fan category is that Mr. Across the Street is a whistler. He fucking whistles all the livelong day, like he’s an extra in a Disney movie about fun-sized men doing manual labor before returning home to their full-sized concubine. He plays bullshit music and then he whistles over it, but he’s not even whistling along with the song. It’s just tuneless blasts of audible air and it makes the whole thing sound like fusion jazz. (You could get secrets out of Gitmo prisoners with this sound, especially when paired with the engine noise.) But that’s not what pushed me into Team Hate.
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