November 3: Neighboring Nuts

I don't really know what's going on with my parents' neighbors. We think the son is a high school boy and we know the daughter is a UCSB graduate from last year or the year before. We don't know if the parents are still together, but we know the grandmother is living in the garage. To make matters worse, we don't even know which one is the grandmother and which one is the mother.

Not only is there something unusual about the inhabitants of the house, but there is something very peculiar about that house itself. There have been three owners since it was built. All three have been complete nut jobs. The house has never been properly landscaped, yet each owner has felt a certain obligation to mow the weeds on a regular basis. The first owner planted some really ugly trees and never tended to them. The current owners put in a pool, but nothing else. It's literally a fenced-in patio with a hole of water and a sun-bleached slide on two flimsy looking poles. I have no idea what the inside of the house looks like, but the outside looks like Hell.

It's not just us, either. The first owner hated us for no reason at all. When we were building our retaining wall (below her line of sight, mind you) she called the police to make sure we had a permit. When her giant oleanders grew out of control and reached over to our side of the fence, my dad pruned them up so they didn't look ridiculous when he just chopped off the branches that reached over. Her reaction? Cops. I used to play basketball on my hoop every evening when I was done with my homework until dinner was ready. She once told the cops that I played at five in the morning. She was a horrible woman with frizzy hair and she only got along well with my then five-year-old sister.

The second owners were the most normal of the three, but again, they did nothing to their yard. They could have completely remodeled the insides, but it still looked like that old vacant, spooky house on the hill from the street. The real problem, however, was that the lady would not shut up if you started talking to her. I can't count the amount of times I went outside to see what my dad was doing in the yard only to find him stuck at the fence as she went on and on about worthless matters.

You may think that just because my family doesn't know about the current owners, I don't have a right to label them as being nut jobs. That's where you're wrong! My parents have done everything in their power to be "neighborly." When we see the spooky mother/grandmother figure walking, we wave. She'll see us and simply look down. She never waves back. Remember those oleanders? My dad received permission from the owners to trim them up and he's been on their side of the fence as the family drove down the driveway. He has actually stopped his pruning, turned, and looked right into the car to wave and not one person waved back. Their driveway is maybe two feet from the oleanders!

My parents are the original owners of our house and watching three groups come and go is a big enough sample size to officially label the neighboring house as cursed. I'm convinced that if the current owners were to move out, another freak show would move right in. I'm looking forward to seeing what the people look like when my sister and I take over in twenty years. I'm taking bets on whether or not the yard will have any color all all. Who's in?