After some detective work in the neighborhood, I discovered how lowdown and dirty my neighbor’s little charade was.
She claimed, her plumber told her, the evidence was clear. I’d broken water pipes in her yard when I turned the front corner with my riding lawnmower.
When my scheming neighbor talks, in what is for her, normal conversation, you can’t get a word in edgewise. I tried to explain, “If you feel I’ve violated the law, why not call the police?”
Faster than a politician, she sidestepped the issue. The plumber’s account of the incident was quite different. She unwisely bragged about getting someone else–my wife and I–to pay for repairs and excessive water usage.
The plumber was livid. He’d not implicated me in the slightest. Fat chance of him ever working for my scheming neighbor in the future. The leak was due to previous shoddy workmanship by another plumber, when a sprinkler system was installed. He further stated, there was another neighbor, with the same problem, from the same inept plumber.
You can’t win an argument when someone is hellbent on deviancy. I’m sure that if I’d called the Sheriff initially, Ms. X from next door, would have placed all blame on the second plumber. “Well, I don’t know. It’s not my fault. That was what my plumber told me.”
I penned a letter to Ms. X, sent it through regular mail. I expressed disappointment with her behavior–which had slanderous implications.
My wife read the letter and advised me to tone down the rhetoric in some areas. “Lambast her, but don’t besmirch her character,” “What character?” I answered.
The gist of the letter, we didn’t bother others in the neighborhood, and, in turn, didn’t expect to be bothered. We paid our own way and expected others to do likewise.
There’d been other issues with Ms. X in the past. None of them this blatant. Of course she reiterated all past episodes, chapter and verse. Even though those issues were thought to have been laid to rest.
Will there ever be an apology–as requested? I wish I could say I was optimistic, but, I can’t. My wife and I just want to be left alone.
