My good neighbors, Madam and Eve, have a rotten old white neighbor too. Theirs is named Howard. The day they moved in, he introduced himself to them by wandering over in his wife-beater and underwear. He scoldingly showed them where the property line is and told them they should not under any circumstance touch one of the trees.
But that wasn't what Madam remembers most. "His...his...his wrinkled old man junk was flopping everywhere," she told me through her splayed fingers.
He's since complained a couple times more, which is amazing considering what great neighbors they are—by which I mean they're absent 330 days a year. I happened to be there when he recently flopped his junk over to complain that the light by their front door, which is on perhaps 20 hours per year, keeps him up at night.
"So put a fucking plant on your windowsill," I told him. "Problem solved."
Howie hates me. Which rather works out, symmetry-wise.
The girls are absent during the week, which is when he wanders onto their property to make changes to things he does not like. Today I took a picture of him cutting branches off their trees. I sent it to Madam.
"I request permission to tell him off," I said, certain that I would be sanctioned to scare the crap out of an entitled Metamuville old fart.
"Denied."
Sigh.
Someday, someone will green-light me to go full-bore asshole. She will be The One.