Frat House Boys

I live in a residential neighborhood in the city. It actually COULD feel quite suburban, were it not for the close proximity to the center of the city, the extraordinarily diverse community, and the prevalent bus, subway and commuter rail options right outside my door.

Our street is pretty quiet, but there are certain things that go on here that are usually only experienced in the city. For instance, it is not a terribly uncommon occurrence for there to be small crimes on our street. Since living here, a handful of car windows have been smashed in, two bikes have been stolen DURING a block party and one grandmother was mugged walking back from voting in a special election. Still, I feel relatively safe here and we would never dream of leaving our home which has such great city amenities like instant access to buses, trains, Children's Museums, art exhibits, big-tall buildings, shopping, great food, airports, etc.

Phew.

All that said, there is a neighbor in particular that is a thorn in my side. I really need to let it go, ESPECIALLY since he's a renter, but he is without a doubt the most inconsiderate person in our neighborhood.

A little background for you, I live at the top of a one way street that ends at a very busy street that leads straight into our village and then into the city itself. When we first moved here, there weren't many people our age here. There were a lot of older people and a lot of families with kids already in high school. So when the house across the street from us was for sale, I was really excited about the prospect of a young family moving in. Instead, two recent college grads bought the house with help from their parents, chopped up all the rooms inside and rent it out on what seems to be a monthly basis to whomever decides they want to live there. We call it the Frat House.

One of the recent tenants went on a drug binge last summer and ended up so high and out of it that he tried to break down my other neighbor's door...with their American Flag and a remote he stole from someone else's home. He was arrested and given a retraining order, even though charges were never pressed, and from that moment on, was actually not-that-bad a neighbor.

But his friend is just flat. out. dumb.

This guy's car window was smashed last year so he pushed the glass over to our sidewalk and left it there for my son to find and my husband to clean up.

Over the winter, when we had cumulatively more snow than we've ever had before, he would clear off his car INTO our shoveled sidwalk. And leave it there. RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!!! As in, I was in the process of shoveling the walk - and it is a corner lot, so there is A LOT of walk - and he blatantly shoveled the snow from his car into a mound in the middle of the sidewalk. And when I asked him about it, he mumbled that he would take care of it and then in the blink of an eye he was in his house and refused to answer the door when I knocked on it.

Classy.

His other trick is to rev the engine of his motorcycle at ridiculous levels at all hours of the day and then go FLYING out of the driveway and down our street. Then, oddly (and I know this because you can HEAR it) he just drives back up the street over from us and back into his driveway. He does this at least 5 times an afternoon. When I approached him very nicely about slowing down on our residential street, since now there are LOTS of families with young kids, and perhaps revving his engine once he got on the main road, he mumbled an 'ok' at me and then nothing ever changed.

But that is nothing, NOTHING, compared to the latest.

Because the frat house has so many tenants and they all seem to have more than one car as well as girlfriends with cars, parking has become strained on our street. There is a law in our city that prohibits people from parking right up on the corner of the streets so that the emergency vehicles, trash trucks, snow plows, etc. can get by. But with so many cars on our street, the frat house boys have been parking up at the corners for years.

Last week, I noticed a funny little green mark on our sidewalks and wondered what it was. Then, on Wednesday, I found out as the public works department started jack hammering the sidewalk to install 'No Parking to Corner' signs. Since we're on the corner, we got to hear the jack hammer for almost 90 minutes and Little G was none too pleased.

Later that evening, after the signs had been installed and everyone had started arriving home from work. I had just looked out the window to see our awesome neighbor carrying one of the signs down the street and TOSSING IT into another neighbor's yard!

ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME???

I was livid. LIVID. My first thought was great, now I have to listen to them jackhammer this crap again. My second thought was the realization that our sidewalk was totally messed up from where they took the sign out. Lastly, I thought about how regardless of taking the sign down, you DON'T THROW IT IN A NEIGHBOR'S YARD!!!

So I did something that felt really good at the time, but quickly felt awful. I went outside and yelled bloody murder at him. I went racing out of my house shouting, "Are you a FUCKING MORON?!" He just looked at me dumbly while his blonde girlfriend stared at me smoking a cigarette.

I said, 'I saw you take the sign' and he cut me off and said, 'it was already down, what was I supposed to do, run over the shrapnel and leave it there?"

People, that's a lie. He was already parked across the street at the time.

So I turned to him and said, "I don't give a shit how it came down, you don't throw it in your neighbor's yard".

And then I turned to his girlfriend and said, "you need to leave this asshole. He's a fucking moron. Last winter, when I was pregnant, he was throwing snow off his car into my cleared sidewalks while I was shoveling it. He's an real class act. YOU could do a LOT better."

I turned to leave and she just yelled at me that clearly I wasn't very nice either.

And that was that.

Except I seethed for hours.

And then I felt bad.

And then I needed to tell my confrontation avoiding husband what his hot-headed wife had done.

And then we decided that I needed to apologize so that next time the kid doesn't throw the sign in our yard.

So that's what I ended up doing. Yesterday, I saw him come home from work and stepped outside and walked up to their front door and miraculously he answered and I apologized. I told him that I had had an incredibly bad day (which was true) and that watching him with the sign was the last straw and I just snapped and I shouldn't have handled the situation the way I did. And he condescendingly gestured to my belly and said that his sister is pregnant too so he understands my getting all worked up. (jerk)

And it pisses. me. off. Because he didn't apologize for one. darn. thing.

WHO RAISES THEIR CHILDREN THIS WAY?!?!?!

Of course, who raised me to go running out of my house screaming expletives at people?

Alright. That's enough for today. My blood pressure is up again just writing this.

I try to remind myself that it could always be worse. It could be a crack house or a whore house instead of a frat house. But still, I just don't think it is too much to ask for the RENTERS to be more considerate.

Do you a 'bad' neighbor?