In article , "Anonny Moose"
wrote:
"Vox Humana" wrote in message
...
"Anonny Moose" wrote in message
...
You expect us to believe that Dateline NBC get's it's e-mail service
through Yahoo???
That is EXACTLY what I thought when I read the post.
--
Bill R. (Ohio Valley, U.S.A)
The poster may have been a weirdo posing as more than was credible, but
the topic became an interesting enough thread even so.
When Granny Artemis & I first moved here a few years back, we had one
neighbor, a retired police officer, who would swear very vulgarly at the
top of his lungs in his back yard (usually at his innocuous bulldog), &
became paranoid about the dykes whose house overlooked his. I think he was
actually suffering small-pecker syndrome & didn't like the idea of butch
girls higher on the hillside than him. For a while, any time he heard us
in the back yard, he'd start cussing loudly at his dog -- obviously really
for our benifit -- & he would bang on our door to complain about dumb
things, like we got his lawn wet one day with our sprinkler, which we've
been careful never to do again, but sheesh, if he wanted to pay for the
water for our garden I wouldn't complain like that.
For a few months we had endless minor troubles with him, like he'd call
the city on us because the maple tree hung out over the sidewalk (in no
one's way, but the ordinance says it can't hang above the sidewalk lower
than ten feet or some such, & this was a little lower). Part of me wanted
to kick his ass & show him what it's like to have an asshole for a
neighbor, but on second thought I decided I was just going to be nice to
him no matter how big an ass he was. Over time he's become less & less
intrusive & paranoid about our presence & has even come close to seeming
like a nice guy. He has a nice dog at least, & I try to always feel that
anyone with a sweet playful elderly dog can't be all bad.
If we'd continued to play his game of butcher-than-you which got him off
on the wrong foot with us, it could've escalated into an endless feud, but
I just couldn't stand the idea of maintaining a dislike for someone I was
going to be living next door to for a long while. I prefer to reserve my
strongest dislike for nazis, rapists, & child molesters, & not not waste
negativity on some lonely old fart thumping his chest at me.
One day the guy just told me "You better be scared of me" in an outright
threat. I responded by calling him a "weird old coot -- the kind I like" &
forced a big hug on him. Completely flabberghasted him, & from that day
on, he stopped trying to be a nuisance. And it was much less work to be
nice to him than to maintain a pointless grudge; even if I might've been
able to justify being as rude as he used to be, that just takes a lot out
of a body, whereas undermining his hostility with a sudden hug was kind of
amusing & not at all draining to have done.
It may have been dishonest to hug him & say I liked weird old coots,
because I in no way liked him at that moment. But it seemed better to
pretend fondness than to see if I could be more obnoxious than he was
being. And I think the gambit ended up making life better for all
concerned. Tempting though it was to "prove" to him he can't push us
around, that just didn't seem like as rewarding a route as striving for
peace. So I try at the very least to give a friendly wave every time he's
in eye-shot, & a few times we've ended up in actual rational conversations
about gardening, with no references to his behavior that first year we
were here, & no need on my part for him to own up to having been such a
jerk.
I'm sure there are exceptional cases where no degree of reason or decency
would win over a bad-egg neighbor. But I bet in 99% of cases, it takes two
to tango, & even IF one of the two players was closer to "right" or
"justified" in maintaining hostilities, it's still just two hard-headed
fools in a ****ing contest, & in most cases it's going to pay off better
to be gentlehearted even in the face of someone's aggression, unless
endless escalations over nothing-worth-a-fight is what one really is
after.
-paghat the ratgirl
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl:
http://www.paghat.com