This format of post was blatantly stolen from McSweeney's.
Dear Neighbor,
I'm sure you remember this past Saturday since it was one of the nicest days of spring so far. It was sunny and beautiful - the perfect kind of day to spend outside. My husband and I spent it separately in various child-related pursuits and were looking forward to a nice evening on the couch with the windows wide open to let in the cool spring breeze drinking some wine and catching up with one another. No sooner did we wrangle all three of our offspring into bed promptly at eight o'clock and settle in on said couch when we were interrupted by the high-pitched whine if your weed-whacker. Try as we might, we were unable to ignore it's shrill tone as it drowned out any attempts we made at conversation. In an effort to continue our romantic evening, we closed the windows, but then the living room became too warm. We reopened the windows figuring since it was almost completely dark out you would be wrapping up your landscaping session and you finished your whacking soon after.
A few moments later as my husband and I began to relax, what should we hear but a grinding hum as you started up your leaf blower. This, dear Neighbor, was too much to bear. Not only did you interrupt us once, but you commenced to use this audio torture device for the next THIRTY minutes. We were so incensed that, unbeknownst to you in your leaf-blowing trance we opened the front door and watched for ten minutes, incredulously, as you proceeded, in the dark of night, to obsessively blow every bit of weed whacked not only into the street, but a further ten yards down the road into the intersection lest a single particle make it's way back onto your property. To add to this assault on our eardrums you would turn off your blower at random intervals only to start it right back up again just as we assumed you had finished for the evening.
So my question to you Neighbor is, don't you have a life? I assume by your Giants Super Bowl sweatshirt, circa 1987, you are at least a sports fan. The Zubaz pants you wear suggest at some point you were a gym-goer. Either of these pursuits would be a better use of your time than manicuring your lawn on a Saturday night - SATURDAY NIGHT! Now I understand that perhaps you had a busy Saturday as well, and you did not have a chance to do your chores. But is the world going to end if you don't get to your lawn this weekend? And you know we're not going to judge you - look at our grass. It's more of a safe-haven for dandelions than it is a lawn. For Christ's sake go inside and have a beer.
Neighbor, you are not an old guy - I put you at thirty-eighty, forty, tops - so why are you acting like one? Your wife is cute, I see her jaunting around in her terry sweatsuit, so why is she spending Saturday night alone? - which I know for fact because we saw her come out to speak to you as we were staring at you in disbelief from our front stoop. My husband and I wondered about your childless status and were concerned that perhaps you were struggling with infertility when, in reality, the problem is you are outside massaging your lawn when you should be inside massaging your wife. Or perhaps impotence is the problem and you feel better waving around the huge wand of your leaf-blower than contemplating your flacidity.
The point of my letter, dear neighbor, is this. You got off easy. As my husband will attest I am a woman who has no problem with confrontation and limited time to realx. So the next time you decide it's time to play Lawn Doctor anytime after 7:00pm on a weekend, we will be having a little chat. Sure, I'll try to be nice about it and maybe I'll even bring over a bottle of wine and offer you a glass to persuade you to relax a bit and cut out the damn landscaping, but if it the conversation doesn't go the way it should maybe I'll just use it to bash you in the head.
Sincerely,
Mary
PS - This also applies to landscaping before 8:00am on weekends. Interrupt my morning coffee and feel my wrath.
4 comments:
"jaunting around in her terry sweatsuit"
haha. you have a way with words, sis.
at least you are not my neighbors, who have to put up with our "band practice" and raucous themed parties......
As a mother of one small child who really really rarely gets out I have to say, I kind of wish I was K's neighbor. But not yours. ;)
Give him a nice pamphlet on my town where all my neighbors are eighty year old, wrap around sunglass wearing decrepits. Landscaping is a competition and I kid you not last year I was invited to a "Daffodil Party." (my immediate neighbor has planted TWO THOUSAND daffodils.) It's ride-on mower city. He'd fit right in. Jim could even steal some of the company juice (Viagra) free of charge for his little "problem."
Lindsay, you WERE K's neighbor. Remember barricading her out?
haha, yes, the three of us were ALL neighbors, i suppose.
those were good times.
remember the time i put that really tiny girl (can't remember her name) in linday's hockey bag and dragged her into taylor's room and was like "they said we can't leave our equipment out in the hall" and then she jumped out and scared her? HAHA.
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