Know Your Enemy

I’m convinced the neighbor, across the street and to your left, is your enemy.

I’ve done the math with my past neighbors. It adds up. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, the mean old lady, the family with the actor son.

The magnolia trees that line the Valley street I live on shed a few times a year. The great dead brown foliage, still attached to stems, blanket the grass and get blown around, down the street.

My neighbor… directly across and one house to the left… he sweeps the leaves.

my neighbor looks like Lester Holt

He doesn’t have a magnolia in front of his house, but he doesn’t like the leaves from my tree on the pavement in the street in front of his house. He sweeps, maybe two or three times a day.

He hates my tree.

Sometimes he yells on the phone.
Sometimes he yells at people in the house.
One of his three or four dogs has this thing where he screams when he hears a siren, you can hear it through his house across the street and into my house.
When my cat was hit by a car in front of his house, he was out there with a shovel in thirty seconds.
Yesterday, I watched as he had three of the laborers digging up the concrete in his driveway stop their work to move his garbage bins so he could pull his Audi into the spot in front of his house.
I judged.

But, his neighbor?
His neighbor across the street to the left, is me.

Me.

She is the neighbor who coughs on her front porch.
She is the neighbor with broken garbage bins.
For four years she had a boyfriend who often yelled on her front lawn.
She is a woman who watches a man sweeping.
She’s got the stupid tree.
She is the enemy.

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Addendum: I came up with the theory, “If you immediately hate a person on meeting them, they could definitely be your best friend.”
At the age of thirteen and I still abide by this.

It ultimately cancels out the Enemy across the street theory.

It ultimately cancels out any enemy attempts except for the valid enemies.

Forget everything I’ve just written and listen to this song as you go about your day.

If you’re a new paid subscriber, thank you.

If you haven’t bought me a coffee yet this month, why not?