Selena Li
English 1301
Summer Session I
19 June 2015
Living on the Edge I had always kept an optimistic mind when it came to moving, but this time, everything seemed different. It was a sunny afternoon in the middle of July. The movers had finished unloading up the truck, and were starting to bring everything into the new house. At this point, there was nothing for me to do, so I decided to take a walk around the block. Halfway down the street, my sister and I started to meet the neighbors. A crazy neighbor lives next door. My crazy neighbor has been divorced twice with two children: a son and daughter. Seeming completely normal at first, she acted as any ordinary neighbor would, with kindness and thoughtfulness, greeting us with a plate of cookies as a Welcome gift. However, as time passed, I started to learn she was not an ordinary woman as I had thought. Due to the fact that her son works for the police department, she had called the police on my family several times in one month over the simplest things.
The police were called countless times because my garbage can was touching her property. Every time the police arrived, I would explain how the wind had knocked the can over, but they would have to listen to the crazy old lady since her son was Chief at the local police department. Even after the police left, she would argue with me about keeping my stuff on my property. I would try and explain how I did not mean for any of my things to touch her yard, but she would not listen. Tired of having me invade her property, she argued with the police to have them put tape around the dividing line between our properties, just so I would stay off her grass.
A number of times, the police were called because a tree on my property had branches that had grown past the dividing line between our yards. One afternoon, my father was outside trimming the tree leaves to make our yard look presentable, when some of the leaves fell onto her freshly mowed lawn. The crazy old lady saw the leaves on her lawn, and started yelling about how she had just paid people to mow her lawn and now it’s a mess again. Next thing I knew, three police cars were outside my house.
A few weeks after, my mother and I were outside planting new flowers we had just bought. According to our crazy neighbor, the color of the flowers had not matched the color of her flowers, so she wanted us to remove them. When we refused, the crazy old lady went to call the police. At this point, I wasn’t surprised when the police told my father that the neighbor had put a restraining order against our family. I have never felt the need to call the police in this type of situation, especially not for simple property disputes. Late one evening, I drove back home from work. Just as I pulled into my driveway, my neighbor’s daughter, Abby, pulled into her driveway, too. As I was