avatarBebe Nicholson

Summary

The article discusses the author's experiences with eccentric and unusual neighbors in their neighborhood over the years.

Abstract

The author reflects on the peculiar behavior of various neighbors, including a woman who held a memorial service for her mother 15 years after her death, a couple who were never seen and later discovered to have been living in isolation for years, and a woman whose husband died under suspicious circumstances. The neighborhood has transitioned from a friendly community to one filled with eccentric and reclusive residents, leading the author to ponder the nature of normalcy and the increasing oddity of the people around them. The article highlights the challenges of dealing with such neighbors, from an uprooted tree that became a property line dispute to the lack of communication and strange incidents, including a neighbor who was shot and a family that seemingly vanished overnight, possibly due to involvement in the Witness Protection Program. The author concludes that while everyone has quirks, the neighborhood's level of strangeness is beyond the norm, yet there's little one can do aside from being a good neighbor and intervening in instances of clear nuisance, like dog owners not cleaning up after their pets.

Opinions

  • The author initially believed their neighborhood was normal but now views it as harboring abnormal people.
  • There is a sense of nostalgia for the past when the neighborhood was more close-knit and friendly.
  • The author is perplexed by the behavior of their neighbors, particularly those who are reclusive or engage in unusual activities, such as holding a belated memorial service.
  • The author questions the normalcy of their own behavior in light of the eccentricities they observe, suggesting a self-awareness of potential biases in perception.
  • There is a hint of suspicion regarding the circumstances of the neighbor's

What Should You Do When Your Neighbor is Strange?

A normal neighborhood can harbor some abnormal people

This neighborhood looks normal, but is it? Photo by Lesia Gant on Unsplash

My sister-in-law texted me about a new acquaintance in her neighborhood. “She invited me to attend a memorial service for her mom,” my sister-in-law said. “I told her I’d be there. I was sorry for her loss. Then I found out her mother died 15 years ago.”

Who has a memorial service 15 years after the fact?

My conversation with my sister-in-law reminded me of a recent conversation with my husband.

“Do you realize how strange some of our neighbors are?” He said. He had been trying to get in touch with the neighbor behind us about a tree that fell over. Was the tree in our yard or theirs? We weren’t sure.

But in trying to find out, we discovered our neighbors didn’t have a phone number or email address in the neighborhood directory. They didn’t answer their doorbell, either, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen them in 3 years. Were they dead?

Meanwhile the tree sits on the property line, uprooted and leaning precariously toward their house, stalled in its free fall by another tree.

Do we chop it down? Keep trying to contact them? Ignore it?

What Happened to Normal?

When we moved to this neighborhood 32 years ago, the people were normal. We made friends, went to block parties, our kids played together, and we spoke to each other across back yards.

Then those people moved away. Some got jobs in different states. Others retired and downsized. A few bought bigger, more expensive homes. In the meantime, we stuck around watching people come and go, each new wave more eccentric than the last.

A woman with agoraphobia who lived across the street told me she never left her house. Ever. Somehow her husband got her out long enough to move, and another couple moved in.

Trying to be neighborly, I took the new people a plate of cookies. A woman about my age cracked the door a bit, snatched the cookies, and retreated inside as if I were a Jehovah’s Witness waving pamphlets of doom.

I made a few more stabs at friendliness. I invited them over, but they didn’t come and never responded. Whenever she ambled down the driveway to retrieve her mail and spotted me doing yard work, she scurried back inside without getting as far as the mailbox.

I finally gave up. They lived there 5 years without speaking a word until she died. I didn’t know she died until my sister, who is noisier than I am, made a beeline for the yard when she spotted the husband. She wanted to know why so many cars were parked in front of his house.

“My wife died,” he said.

Curious, I Googled his wife. The obituary described her as a people-person who lit up a room.

WTF?

The Man Who Got Shot

That neighbor’s story is nothing compared to the man who got shot. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but see what you think after you hear what happened.

They were a good-looking couple, young with no children. One night, after they had lived in the house across the street a few months, there was a gunshot. An ambulance and a firetruck roared into the neighborhood, sirens screaming. I flew to the window and watched as they carried the husband off on a stretcher.

“He died cleaning his gun,” the wife said.

She had him cremated a couple of days after the ambulance took him away. A week later, I invited her over.

“I’m so sorry for your loss. You must be devastated,” I said.

“Not as much as somebody who’s been married longer,” she replied. “I mean, we were only married two years. The first time we met, he told me how much he liked my butt. I think that’s all he liked about me, my butt.”

She didn’t stop there.

“He was very controlling. I mean, he wouldn’t tell me a thing about his business, even though I’m smart and had some great ideas. Now I’ve inherited the business, and I get to run it myself.”

She sold the house, moved away, and I never saw her again, but I always thought our conversation was strange.

The Witness Protection Program

When the next people moved in, I told my husband, “Finally somebody normal!” Their children played outside and went to school, like regular people.

But the children’s parents weren’t friendly. We waved to the kids and they waved back while the parents kept to themselves, lurking in the shadows, seldom making an appearance.

We didn’t know it, but things were about to take a dramatic turn.

The man ended up being in a tragic accident that left him in a coma for weeks. I’m still not sure what happened. I heard the wife was in the hospital with him day and night, so I took food over a couple of times. One of the children met me outside, halfway across the yard, to get the food.

I left a get a well card in the mailbox because I wanted to be a good neighbor without being a bother, and I left a message on the answering machine asking if they needed help, but I never heard anything.

The man finally recovered enough to come home from the hospital. Shortly after that, in the dead of night, they packed up and left. Vanished, every trace of furniture gone. No sign they had ever been there. They must have sold the house without putting up a For Sale sign, and I never saw a moving van.

One of our other neighbors said, “What happened to them? I didn’t know they were leaving.” My husband believes they were part of the Witness Protection Program.

Maybe it’s Me

I could go on about other neighbors we’ve had through the years, but you get the idea. What can you do about them, anyway? Nothing, unless their dog poops in your yard and they don’t clean it up, which one of our neighbors allowed their dog to do until we asked them to stop.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s me. Maybe we’re all a little eccentric in our own way, and that’s okay unless somebody gets shot.

“If everything seems strange to you when you look around, then there must be something weird about you! If nothing looks strange to you when you look around, then there must be something weird about you again!”

― Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks so much for reading! Bebe Nicholson is a former editor, journalist, newspaper editor, book publisher, flight attendant, retail manager, and nonprofit director. Currently, she’s a mom, grandmom, and freelance writer. If you want to have unlimited access to everything on Medium for $5 a month, you can sign up here.

Humor
Neighborhoods
People
This Happened To Me
Memories
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