Precious

I moved into a


At first I was excited- son will have kids next door to play with! I had noticed the kids seemed a little off, and so did the Dad, but I did not really think anything of it. Plus I was desperate for son to have some friends. But then some weird things started happening. One day I came home to find the 3 year old alone outside. He told me that Dad had gone to see his sister's teacher, and that Grandpa had gone to the store. I seriously considered calling social services. Then the kids started walking into my house uninvited. One time, I was alone and in the shower and they started banging on the bathroom door chanting "HEY NEIGHBOR!!!" over and over for literally about 10 minutes. I refused to get out of the shower. BTW, this is not normal behavior for kids, even young ones.

For my birthday, I got a small fireplace for the backyard. I was SO excited to have a fire. Over the next couple months, I had a whole 2 fires, both fairly quiet and on weekends. A couple weeks later, while chopping fire wood, the Dad next door comes outside and says "You guys are not allowed to have fires anymore. I am sick of smelling smoke. I should be able to have my windows open all night and not have to think about it. Oh, and you guys aren't suppose to have dogs here, either," exit the Dad; (I was looking after my parents dogs for the weekend. AND the house owner owns a dog and has permission from the condo board to do so...).

Now, it was not necessarily what he said, but how he said it. Like a total miserable douche. You would think he would WANT to stay on good terms with us, since we let his kids come over to play. After that things just kind of went downhill. Every time I saw him he had something nasty to say ("Your dog needs to shut the fuck up"for example) or something to complain about.

Just to clear things up, we are respectful people. We are not loud, we try to be friendly, we keep to ourselves and try not to piss anyone off. As soon as the dog starts barking, she comes inside within 30 seconds. We do NOT leave her out there barking, and we even invested in a $120 stop bark scent collar. Needless to say, we no longer had son playing with those kids. The Dad was a miserable asshole (who also smokes in the house with the kids), the kids were strange and behaved oddly, and the Grandpa was unfit to care for children alone. Don't even ask me where the mother fits in in all this...


About a week and a half ago, the Dad decides to swear at my sometimes roommate because his dog peed on a tree which sits in the middle of our lawns. My roommate told him he is a miserable asshole who needs to give it a rest. I decided I did not care what the Dad thought anymore, and that I was going to stop living my life in fear of pissing him off. There was one thing that seemed to give the Dad a little bit of joy though , and that was building rockets and then setting them off to fly. I imagine he spent quite a bit of time and money on this.

Last week, the Dad went out to the middle of nowhere with his (maybe imaginary) rocket flying club and set off a rocket. The rocket got caught in some power lines, and he decided it would be worth it to get a ladder, climb to where his rocket was stuck, and try to get the rocket down with a stick. The Dad was severely electrocuted, fell 40 feet, and then later died in the hospital.

Interestingly, out of all the people he was with, noone tried to stop him.... Any time any person I have known, even just barely known, has died, all I feel is incredibly awful and sad. After the initial shock of hearing the news, my most dominant emotion was... relief.

How bad is that??

Well it's the truth. I felt bad for his kids, and I was worried about the Grandpa taking care of himself (so I offered my help anytime), but after taking some time reflecting on these things, I couldn't help but think... 'I can have a FIRE this weekend! And I don't need to be paranoid every time puppy barks that he is going to call the authorities or something! Maybe I can even listen to some loud music while I clean the house this weekend!'

Am I a bad person?

Perhaps.

But this also made me realize some things. Life is precious. We really should not take it for granted, or spend it being miserable ALL the time. We should not spend it treating other people like crap just because we are not happy with something in our own lives. Because we could die tomorrow.

And man, I REALLY don't want anyone to actually feel relieved when I go just because I am no longer around to be a miserable jerk.

Oh, and most importantly: please stay away from power lines. townhouse type condo about a year and a half ago. Overall, it has been a not too bad place to live (besides the Condo Bitches who ring the doorbell to complain about how my dead rose bush just "breaks my heart" every time she walks by it- Bitch). My next door neighbors included a single dad, two kids (aged 3 and 8), and a grandpa with Alzheimer's.