A.B. from Pennsylvania writes:

I would like to share my story. My husband and I and our 2 kids rented a home in the Upper Bucks County area of Pennsylvania in August 2008. What we moved next door to was the antithesis of the anti-Christ. My husband is a cement mason in a Philadelphia Local Union. I am a part time HR rep for a company. We work hard. In 2006 my husband got a DUI. It was a strain on the family, but we worked through it. He was on probation. The last time we had to go to court for a hearing, we saw our next door neighbor at the hearing. Turns out she is a probation officer for Bucks County and has the reputation of an over the top, all out bitch.

I don't know if she couldn't get into law school or the FBI but apparently she is extremely bitter and likes that feeling of belittling the small guy. She looked at my husband and I and concluded that we were not worthy of living next door to her. A few days later, my husband spoke to her husband because of a situation that happened the previous night. My husband was smoking a cigarette and saw our neighbor's bike on the sidewalk. He went over picked up the bike and was bring it up to the garage when my neighbor's husband came out. My husband explained that he was bringing the bike up and introduced himself, and my neighbour's husband, who is a prison guard at Bucks County Dept. of Corrections said, "Yeah, I know you". Apparently, he thinks that he is some sort of hard ass. What a joke. More like the Pillsbury dough boy. He is a glorified baby sitter, that gets paid to sit on his ass and yell at some poor souls that have lost their way in life. I mean who sits there as a young boy and thinks, "One day I am going to be a prison guard and help the world". I am thinking that he must be hung like a light switch and suffers from some sort of complex. I often hear him yelling through the walls at his kids.

After speaking to my husband about this, we decide it would be a good idea to clear the air. The next day my husband rings the door bell and asks to speak to him regarding the previous evening. My husband also was bringing him a bag of Thomas the Tank Engine toys that my son had out grown playing with and I had promised to them before we had the falling out. I figured that I was living here and I liked the house, I didn't want to be best friends but I also didn't want to be shunned either. They spoke about my husbands run in with the law and the neighbours admitted that both him and his wife "looked him up" and they knew all about him. My husband tried to explain that we were good people, we took care of our house, we didn't have wild parties, that were were just your ordinary family that worked hard and for the most part kept to ourselves. My husband also asked that they not share the DUI with the other neighbors because we didn't want the parents in this snotty ass development to judge our kids on actions that my husband did.

They ended up telling everybody, and now people turned their backs on us as soon as we come out the door. All of the cordial waves and the morning greetings came to an abrupt stop. My husband had lost his drivers license with the DUI and they knew it. He told my husband that apparently she saw him driving (which wasn't the case). Apparently, the think they are the "Super Twins" over there and that they are going to "rid the world of all the evil doers". The conversation ended and my husband came home.

We have 2 small children. They made friends here, even with the little girl next door. I gave her drinks and treats within reason, that sort of thing. One day this little girl came in our house and was playing upstairs in my daughters room. When she was seen by her parents, through the open window, she was swiftly told to come home. This girl was grounded for a week for being in my home. Like my husband was some sort of child rapist or robbed someone a gun point. He got a freakin' DUI for Christ sake!!!!

The winter went on and she was apparently telling his probation officer that he was driving. Again, which was not the case. My husband's work is seasonal. When it is 30 degrees or below or raining or snowing, he doesn't work. She also was telling the local police. We then found out she had made a poster made of him and posted in the local police department. It gave a description of my car and him, said he had a DUI and his drivers license was under suspension and if seen driving to pull him over. This is the lengths she will go to are boundless.

She wants to to move and not buy this house. Which, in the beginning, was the plan. She even had the balls to tell my landlord that it would be unethical and unmoral to sell us this house. She then told the landlord that other neighbors would be calling her in protest us buying the house. So that is why, I HATE MY NEIGHBORS!! If anyone has any words of wisdom or thinks I could sue them for harassment or knows a good attorney that handles this type of matter please let me know.

30 YEARS IN THE FREEZER

An 83 year old lady in the U.K. has been accused of hiding her dead mothers body in a freezer... for 30 years. Believe it or not foul play is not suspected. It is believed she was afraid of getting in trouble with the authorities, as her mother was an illegal immigrant at the time of her death, estimated at sometime in late 1970's.

WAR ON NEIGHBOUR TERROR

A crazy-ass dude from Kissimmeee, Florida with an extensive police record declared war on his neighbour, and then drove his 1992 Honda thru the wall of his neighbours home. The man was promptly beaten up by the owner of the house, who restrained him until the police arrived and escorted him to his new living quarters at the county jail.

Which all doesn't sound so bad when compared to the crazy shit that went down in Toledo, Ohio the other day. A crazy-ass dude pulled out his gun collection and starting shooting at the neighbours after determining that they were responsible for the kidnapping and murder of his parents. After a standoff with local authorities the man was shot dead by police. His parents returned from their vacation to find they were responsible for planning a funeral.

Finally in the U.K., the Southampton City Council is moving to evict Mary Plaisted from her government subsidized ground floor apartment. Plaisted, who has been dubbed "Britian's oldest neighbour from hell" is 98 and is accused of a years-long campaign of harrassment and intimidation of her neighbours. She is accussed of banging on doors and windows with her cane at all hours of the day and night and recently had her phone disconnected after calling the police over a hundred times. She is also accussed of pressing the social assistance panic button ("I've falled down and can't get up") over 500 times in one month for no reason at all.

Frannie writes:

We've been in a small quiet town about 35 min. outside of Boston for a little over 13 years. Our neighbors on one side are like an extra set of grandparents to our three kids. The people across the street keep to themselves for the most part but when we do meet up they are always really nice. However, the neighbor abutting our property on the other side has been anything but pleasant since we moved in, except for her "fake" politeness.

When we arrived our oldest was 3. He would throw his ball around the yard and sometimes it would accidentally land in her yard. He would get his ball and she would say to him from her window "you need to keep that in your yard". He was 3! When he was 5 and he was playing with his younger brother, even though I had warned them, the ball accidentally went into her yard and she opened her window and told them if they did it again she was going to call me. One sunny afternoon our kids come to the door yelling "the big man said it was OK for us to play with his girls". We went outside and found this woman's son and grandchildren in our yard. Her son was nice enough and so were the girls, but we were floored. She put on her "fake" politeness talking about how cute children are. I'm sure for her son's benefit, considering anyone hardly visits her.

A year later she started yelling at my kids who were playing behind our shed which is near the property line. She accused them of killing her grass. There was no grass there to begin with. My husband had them rake up the area and we had to ban them from playing there. When our oldest was 12 he decided he wanted to mow the lawn for allowance. We supervised and while he was out mowing he stopped to pick up a stick and she yells over that he was too young to be mowing, that was his father's job.

We eventually had a third child and decided we needed to put an addition on our home. We didn't need a variance, but the project set her off anyway. She was constantly making comments about how the construction and that the house was now too big. She started a bunch of renovation activity at her own home and then planted a series of arborvitaes along the property line. We were thrilled, and we prayed that they would grow. Unfortunately, many didn't survive the first two winters, due to the heavy snow and deer. She would water them religiously but to no avail, and most of them died.

One afternoon during a rain storm a branch from a pine tree that sits on the property line fell on one of her dear arborvitaes. A small branch was snapped off. We saw the whole thing and decided not to say anything. She came out later and called me over to ask if I could take a picture of it with MY camera and if I would submit a claim to MY homeowners insurance.

The final straw came last spring when my husband who had been gone for a week on a business trip was playing outside with our kids and she accused him of driving a piece of equipment on her property a couple of days prior and that she had the tire marks to prove it. She ignored him when he said he hadn't home, she just kept accusing him. By now she had awakened the beast from within and I came out and strung together a thread of profanities that would have made Howard Stern blush. Bad example for my kids, I know. But she hasn't bothered us since.

So flash forward to the present, we have now built a privacy screen on our deck, planted bushes on our side and removed the swing set. But here's the funny thing, for a woman who wants nothing to do with us, she rakes incessantly on the property line where dead arborvitaes stand as a testament to her stupidity. She constantly spies on us while we are in the backyard working or socializing with guests. Spying is a bad word, it makes it seem like she's sneaking a peek, but she blatantly stares with rake in hand. It's bad enough that she'll rake near our shed when my husband is inside with a friend or family member and listen to their conversation. She also watches me have drinks on the porch with my friends and family and stares at my mother-in-law while she's spending time with her grandchildren. So if she can't stand us, why does she find us so fascinating?

I think she is lonely and her arborvitaes were her only friends - Ca1v1n

FUN IN DETROIT

Just got back from a couple days on business in Detroit. Technically I was in Southfield, one of the suburban communities that everybody fled to when downtown Detroit went to shit. For the most part it was uneventful but I need to share a story from Sunday night.

We arrived late, roughly midnight and about 3 hours later then planned thanks to one of my co-workers forgetting her passport and having to return home. We had reservations at your typical business travel hotel. One of those places that is very nice and clean but no restaurant, no room service, no pool, etc. Purely caters to business travellers.

The thing was despite having a GPS and printouts from Google Maps, we couldn't find the place to save our life. Based on both the GPS and the maps we were in the right place but no hotel. Lots of other hotels all around but not ours. We ended up stopping at a gas station for directions. The guy inside was an idiot, telling us to drive up to 12 mile and blah blah. I knew we were close to the hotel, and I knew 12 mile was way too far. We were about to give up when a guy pulled in to buy gas.

I walked over and as I approached yelled out. Hey, do you know how to get to blah blah blah.... This was no ordinary guy. Brand new 2009 Jaguar with 20" spinner rims, decked head to toe in Sean John gear and baked out of his mind. He could barely keep his eyes open. Instead of blowing me off he was like "oh yea... yea... that is right by my place... follow me...."

So you are probably thinking that following a guy we just met, who was likely driving a car purchased with drug money, down a street where we had no idea where we were going was probably a bad idea. We thought so as well, but he seemed genuine. I can't place it. Just a feeling. He drove us right to the lobby entrance of a beautiful hotel, waved, and sped off. Problem was, it wasn't our hotel. It has a similar name, but it still was not ours.

We eventually found our hotel. The map had it on the wrong side of the freeway. We had driven within 100 meters of it twice during the 45 minutes we drove around in circles. It was around a tight corner and you couldn't see the sign from the street or the highway. We all sent emails to our corporate travel dept. and asked that they never book anybody in this hotel again.

STUPID NEIGHBOURS VS AUTISM

Story out of San Diego I stumbled across today. A family moved into an picture perfect San Diego suburb thinking it would be good for their family and were not welcomed with open arms. Their crime? Having a child with Autism.

The Trussell's have been subject to a series of wild accusations that their child is violent and a threat to other children in the neighbourhood. Calls were made to the Police and Child Protective Services resulting in no charges, the accusations being determined as baseless.

Gary Trussell, a 25 year veteran and commercial airline pilot had his professional reputation maligned by the neighbours, who accused him of being a dangerous and unpredictable drug addict. From the evidence it seems all he did was take exception to his son being bullied by some other children in the neighbourhood and asked that his child be left alone.

When series of threats, accusations, and phone calls failed to achieve the twisted neighbours desired result they took the Trussell family to court, demanding their children be confined to their own yard. The case was tossed out and the neighbours have been ordered to pay the Trussell's legal fees. There is still justice in this world.