Meet the Neighbors

Have you ever had a horrible neighbor? The kind that made going home at the end of the day a miserable experience, the kind of person you looked at and thought “WHO DOES THAT?”. Well, we’ve had six years of those neighbors. It’s been six years this month since we bought our condo, and we have seen quite the parade of tenants through the other units. Whatever we did in a past life is coming back to haunt us, because we have seen it all, from selfish trust fund princess to neighbors who smoked crack. Yes, crack.

At this point, I would trade neighbors with these people.

Six little years has introduced us to the following cast of characters:

• The vapid trust fund blonde teenager, playing house with boyfriend in a property that daddy bought, well, until they broke up two months after living together. Then it became our turn to deal with her not cleaning up after her dogs, even after we asked verbally, by email, in notes, and finally demanded, without success. The final straw? When a guy she was “friends” with started building a free patio in our shared back yard. Their “friendship” ended halfway through construction, she learned that nothing in life is free, and we got stuck with a construction nightmare, complete with giant rats, for an entire summer.

• The player, a normally nice guy with kids but one who brought different women home seemingly every week and giving them keys to our common front door. Not that they needed keys, because he was fond of leaving the door wide open to the outside. Clearly, he did not have to pay for heat.

• The crack smokers- Yup, we had a neighbor who initially seemed pretty okay, minus her habit of leaving the door to the outside wide open. (Really what’s with all these people leaving doors to the outside open, in the city, in the middle of winter?) That is, until her boyfriend came back from being away. Away in a place where he lifted weights, got homemade tattoos, and seemed to have had his teeth knocked out, if ya know what I mean. They proceeded to fill the air with crack, yes CRACK smoke and the sweet sounds of what sounded like her beating him up.  Because that’s what young, hardworking professionals in their first home want to deal with, crack. The kicker? They insisted on parking in the space we were renting until I put the smack down. Don’t mess with me after a long work day and volunteer event in the middle of winter. There may have been words. But the final straw was that, when they finally moved, my husband’s very nice bike went missing with them. Hopefully karma catches up with them someday, before or after the Boston Police.

• And then there are our newest neighbors, the teenage/college student hipsters who have, in a month living beneath us, vomited on our porch, littered our garden, patio, sidewalk, and INDOOR carpeted common space with cigarette butts. They too lack the concept of locking doors and not smoking in common spaces, even after being asked. We’ve since had to move some of our items stored in the area so that they don’t end up smelling. I am not sure they do anything but smoke all day long. They and their friends perpetually look stoned or as if they just woke up, or both. Mostly, I am afraid that they are going to burn the house down. Who puts cigarettes out on carpet?!

I should also mention that every single couple(other than us), including newlyweds married less than a year, who has moved into the building has broken up. A cursed abode, perhaps?

The above is really just scratching the surface. There is so much more to each story (especially the vapid trust fund princess) that I could probably write a book about our first home ownership experience. It has been a nightmare.

Have you had any really bad neighbors?