Bad Neighbors
Keeping Up With the Joneses
Why I hate the discourteous schmuck across the street
“Honey, come quick, you won’t believe what he’s doing now!”
Really? I won’t believe it?
Last Thursday, that inconsiderate jerk across the street woke us up at six in the morning when the second floor of his house exploded. My wife and I run to the bedroom window in time to see this prick lasso the back of an army truck. Then they proceed to drag him through the neighborhood, tearing up front lawns for forty-five minutes. Finally, the truck stops right back where it started, and my next door neighbor gets in a fist fight with the driver.
He must be on fentanyl. It’s the only rational explanation.
Does the discourteous schmuck across the street fight fair? Of course not! He pulls out a pistol and shoots the driver in the chest. Then he walks over, reaches into the driver’s pocket, and robs the bastard. Stands right there on the lawn holding up the driver’s golden amulet, translating the Latin inscription with a smile on his face. As if he didn’t just fire a bullet into the myocardium of a fellow human being in front of three dozen witnesses.
Do the police come and arrest this thieving putz? Do the driver’s friends seek revenge? Is the murdering meathead stricken with PTSD?
No! The local university picks up the amulet and holds a press conference to express their eternal gratitude. They even make May 19th Indiana Jones Day in the town of Princeton, New Jersey.
To top it all off, that steamy blonde vixen — the one that showed up out of nowhere with her long legs and her suspicious German accent — she runs straight into the arms of that callous bozo. The two passionately embrace in the door frame of the crumbling husk that used to be the house next door.
Your house is still on fire you imbecile!
Oh, how I pray that just once this insufferable clown suffers the predictable consequences of his actions. All I ask is for one giant burning timber to fall on his legs and put him in a wheelchair. Then maybe he’ll stick to teaching archeology at Princeton, instead of gallivanting around scuffing up priceless historical artifacts as he carelessly wrestles them away from anonymous henchmen.
So guess what, honey? No matter what this asshole archeologist is doing, I’m going to believe it.
“He’s got this big boulder on his front porch, and he’s polishing it. Looks like it’s full of hieroglyphs.”
I peek out the window above our kitchen sink. Sure enough, this unsympathetic dumbhead is sitting on his porch, polishing a big rock. By the way, his house was miraculously rebuilt basically overnight and looks exactly like it used to before it was destroyed in the fire. I can’t get a permit to chop down the dead birch tree in my backyard, but this nut job gets instant approval to build a brand-new house. The city hasn’t even filled in a pothole on this street in seven years.
It must be nice to be Indiana Jones.
I grab the binoculars and focus in on my neighbor’s big boulder.
“Is that the Rosetta Stone?!?!”
My wife was right: I don’t believe it. I crank the window open. “Hey! Junior! What are you doing with the Rosetta Stone on your front porch? That belongs in a museum!”
“So do you!” my next-door-nimrod yells back. He never even looks up from the stone, until a Panzer tank pulls up out of nowhere, and four brutes in black army uniforms with red bandanas around their arms pop out.
Are those swastikas? Wait a minute: did the Nazis come back?
Of course, my violent, shoot-first-ask-questions-never neighbor throws a punch. Ten seconds into their visit and there’s already a brawl. It goes on for thirty minutes, until everyone in the fight has had three ancient Sumerian pots smashed over their head. Then another army truck pulls up, and more Nazis get out, this time carrying what appears to be a thick, green metallic penis.
“Is that a bomb?”
“Looks like the GBU-43B Massive Ordnance Air Blast,” my wife says, casually sipping her coffee. “It’s pretty impressive.”
“It’s showing off, is what it is!” I say, clearing all of our mustard and lunch meats out of the fridge so that we can seal ourselves in. If this is anything like last month, when that bomb goes off we’ll be thrown three miles, turning end over end, slamming our bodies against the fridge walls until we emerge miraculously with a couple of cuts and a dusty hat.
“I swear, we have the worst neighbor in the world!”
“Everybody always thinks their neighbors are the worst neighbors,” my wife reassures me. “I bet if he moved out, somebody even worse would move in.”
“Who could possibly be worse?”
“Martha Stevenson says the boy next door plays nothing but Nickelback at full blast out his open bedroom window all day long.”
Maybe Indiana Jones isn’t so bad. . .
Enjoyed yourself? Then read this, Stupid:
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