So I have lived in the same house since I was about 7 or 8… and my neighbors hate my family. I blame my dad.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a daddy’s girl. He even calls me his “favorite son.” — I am in fact a woman, but I tend to do what would fall into the category of “boy things.” We work on cars together, watch Star Wars and Star Trek (he even took me out of school for a day for the Star Wars 1-3 marathon at the movie theater). He also taught me how to drive which will be elaborated in another post. But my neighbors hate us, and I blame him entirely.

We moved into this house during the winter. My dad had one of my sisters and I lay in the snow and then he lifted us out of the snow. I remember it as us playing in the snow. What my dad did next sealed our fate as the weird family on the block.

My mother had been inside packing to visit my grandpa up north and my dad brought my sister and I back inside after playing in the snow to get ready. While we were inside my dad sprayed juices from our snow cone maker into the imprints of our bodies in the snow. It was the cherry flavored syrup (in case you are not following, it looked like blood). He then put up police tape around the yard. WHO KEEPS POLICE TAPE ON HAND!? My dad, that’s who.

My mom came outside, and laughed. She was still pissed at our neighbors for not greeting us when we moved in to our house. She is from Texas, in Texas people freaking greet their new neighbors. She let my dad leave it up, and packed the family into the car and we left for two weeks. When we came home, our neighbors finally started showing up asking what had happened. My dad kept laughing at them, and my mother insisted that they were all crazy people who would rather meet potential serial killers than say hello to their new neighbors.

This became the beginning of morbid fascination and seemingly endless dislike from those who lived around us.

There was a summer day where my baby sister had been crying outside as we were getting ready for a family bike ride. My other sister had been carrying a doll and my dad asked her if he could borrow it as he saw some of our neighbors lurking around outside. He then left the garage with the doll ran up to the basketball hoop yelling “WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP!?” and dunked the doll into the hoop. My crying sister had simultaneously stopped crying. One neighbor shrieked in horror. Then my dad picked up the doll and yelled “GOTCHA!”

Another few weeks passed by and during that same summer my next door neighbor had been biking past and then slowed by our house and started talking to my dad about the new baby and my dad asked if he would like to see her, and he made a grave mistake when he said yes. My dad went inside and grabbed a doll and wrapped it up in a blanket and walked back outside to the end of the driveway to where my neighbor was waiting. As my dad neared my neighbor he faked a trip and dropped the baby. My neighbor, still on his bike, attempted to jump off and catch “my sister.” As my dad stood up, he laughed at my neighbor who, maimed by his bike and the tar on the road, began to cuss out my dad (who deserved it!). My dad then went and got my actual sister and showed off his pride and joy to our neighbor who left quickly after to clean his wounds.

Months passed. Then one fateful day something bad happened. My mother fell down the stairs and what doctors would later tells us would be that she had broken her ankle and bruised her hip. At the time my dad was maybe 160lbs, and had little to no muscle. He tried to lift my mother up from the bottom of the stairs on his own, but simply could not do it. He went to the next door neighbor’s house (the biking neighbor from before) and begged for him to come over and help. This neighbor told my dad to go fuck himself essentially, and that he would not fall for another one of his tricks. My dad pleaded that it wasn’t a trap, but she was actually hurt… My neighbor still did not believe him. Finally my mom called on the phone screaming for our neighbors to help, and my neighbor hesitantly came over. When he got there and saw my mother in tears, he panicked and ran down the stairs with my dad and helped bring her up the stairs. He apologized to my mother, but she just looked at my dad and blamed him. It was his fault after all… it is always the husband’s fault.

If you learn anything from this post it should be: GO INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO THE NEW NEIGHBORS! If you don’t, you are a jerk.

❤ Court