I admit that I could’ve turned the other cheek a few times with my neighbour. Maybe if I was a better neighbour myself there would be less friction, maybe if I was less sensetive we would get along. Unfortunately for us, I didn’t, I’m not, I wasn’t, and we don’t.

Across the street lives Randy and his family. Randy is, in spite of his very polite and gracious wife, a self-centred and arrogant prick. Randy is a civil engineer by trade, employed by the city. Anyone who has ever known an engineer knows that they don’t live in the same world as humans. They live in a special, magical place where they get to tell people what to do, and it gets done, things get done to their specifications and standards, they rarely get questioned and are never accustomed to refusal.

Over the years I’ve watched this pasty-skinned arsehole try to kill himself in a variety of ways from pruning his trees in a windstorm to laying his aluminum ladder on the electrical service line to his house so he could water his hanging baskets. So far he has survived, and has provided my family with hours of entertainment.

When I first moved in it didn’t take me long to tell Randy to go fuck himself. As a matter of fact it was less than 24 hours. I moved in on a June Saturday. The previous owner had stopped mowing the lawn three weeks previously, knowing it would be my problem, not his. The grass was about eight inches long.

Things in the house were just coming out of boxes when there was a knock on the door at 8 am Sunday morning. It was Randy, and the first time I ever met him in my life. His words of greeting were “Your lawn looks terrible” I stood there in my doorway, surveying this officious little dingleberry, totally at a loss for words. He stood there, looking out on my lawn making “Tsk tsk” sounds. It slowly dawned on me that this must be a joke, he was welcoming me to the neighbourhood using what must be an offbeat, quirky sense of humour. My heart filled with a warm feeling of cameraderie, the sure and certain knowledge growing in me that this must be the first step in a long and special friendship between neighbours. A grin spread across my face and  a chuckle escaped my lips. His head snapped around, his eyes narrowed, “It’s not funny!” He snapped, “It’s a disgrace!” “I know you just moved in, but we have standards that need to be upheld in this neighbourhood!”

I looked from him to his orderly billiard table of a lawn, then around the nearest houses, none better nor worse than mine, just less grass. “Well…” I said through gritted teeth, knowing that I was going to be living here a long, long time “I’ll get to it when there’s time”

“There had better be time before tomorrow sir” He said, “Or I’ll be calling the bylaws officer”

He stood there, hands on hips, glaring at me, certain, it seemed, that I would back down as soon as his threat was made.

“Would you be willing to bet, sir, that if you started running right this instant, you could reach the end of my driveway before I kicked you in the ass?”

“I beg your pardon?” He spluttered.

I stepped out the door, he bolted, so began our relationship.

There have been a number of conflicts between Randy and I over the ensuing years. Most of them centre around our respective lawns. I like a reasonably nice lawn, but he appears obsessed with his. I try to mow mine more or less every other week. I don’t object to clover or moss, nor do I have anything against dandelions. I like to think that my lawn is a reflection of my laid-back, eclectic style, I let it do as it pleases, I keep it as trimmed as I can, but I refuse to be a slave to it. His, on the other hand is the focus of his being. It is breathtaking in its flawlessness. It’s amazingly uniform green, it’s perfectly level, and never, ever untrimmed.

Each year there seems to be a “theme” to our lawn conflicts.

Last year Randy and his family went away for a week. I know how very important his lawn’s health is to him so I wanted to do my part to be a good neighbour. I made sure it got lots and lots of fertilizer while he was away. I spread a nice slow-release nitrogen fertilizer everywhere that I could and watered it daily for him.

 All summer I watched that man forced to mow his lawn every other day.

One year it was dandelions. He came over and complained that dandelions were sprouting on my lawn and instructed me to spray herbicide to get rid of them so that they wouldn’t spread to his. I don’t use herbicides, and refused. In fact, to reflect my mature, urbane outlook I plucked every single puffball of seeds that I could find and planted them in my flower beds. The eruption of yellow was truly breathtaking. Randy nearly needed to be hospitalized for apoplexy.

Another year the theme was lawnmowers. Randy had a pretty nice self-propelled unit worth a few bucks. Mine was about twenty years old and held together alternatey by threats and pleading. My children learned most of their profane vocabulary from me and that old Briggs & Stratton engine. The year of the lawnmowers was climaxed when I was away for a week at a conference in July. I hadn’t had a chance to mow before I left so it was pretty much a jungle when I got back late one Saturday night.

Early Sunday morning I was awakened by a lawnmower idling under my bedroom window. I got up and looked outside to find Randy’s gleaming mower sitting under my bedroom window and randy walking back across the street to his car where his family waited to go to church. By the time I got some pants on and went outside he had long gone. I went over to the machine to shut off the engine when I saw the note taped to it.

“Hey neighbour, obviously your mower isn’t working, or your lawn wouldn’t be an embarrassment, so use one that isn’t a piece of crap and MAYBE THE JOB WILL GET DONE!

Sometimes brilliance is elusive, and sometimes everything comes together in a flash. I looked at the swath he had mowed straight across my lawn, I looked at the mower, and I knew exactly what I had to do.

I shut it off and wheeled it to the side of the road and flagged down the first pickup truck that passed. The driver stopped, I walked to the open window and said “Want a free mower?”

I even helped him load it. Randy came back from church by the time I had most of my lawn mowed, he sauntered over and said “Hey, nice to see you finally getting around to it, where’s my mower?”

“Mower?” I replied “Why the hell would I have your mower?”

Neighbours from hell… interesting question. I guess in my neighbourhood that’s me.