Playing Nice

Dear Miss J,

I was perplexed to learn of the exchange you had with Honey last week after the hail storm. It was hysterically relayed to me something like this:

“I really don’t like those new people (that would be us) that moved in next door (two years ago) because when there are big storms (last night) all of the leaves from their trees (those would be our trees) blow in my (her) yard and they (us) don’t ever come over to pick them up.”

You see, not only am I perplexed as to how you can tell which leaves came from our trees and which leaves came from YOUR trees, I thought you DID like us. I was under the impression that, when Honey found you wandering around the Kroger parking lot (because you forgot what your car looked like) and saw you home, we were the kind of neighbors that look out for each other. Or, that when you meander every nook and cranny of your yard on our blazing Southern summer days for hours on end and I regularly peek out to be sure you’re okay, I absolutely thought that you found that endearing. And when you didn’t pick up your paper from the curb for two days and I called on you to check in, I thought you appreciated that. Ooooh, what about the time that I saved you from knocking down the wall to your kitchen when, after backing into one of your garage doors, you tried to pull forward enough to reverse out of the other garage door? I’ve always got your back. Most of all, when (day after day after) you amble over in the afternoon and dazzle me with the same old story of the corn on your right foot and how you’ve lost the mate to your one comfortable shoe, I smile, nod, offer what platitudes I can muster and end on a “bless your heart.”

So, since we’ve been neighbors for nearly two years now and, bless your heart, you were just all out of sorts over the leaves in your yard, Honey and I took no offense to your comment. Rather, we (along with twenty something of our Facebook friends) got quite a giggle out of the little aforementioned pronouncement and just wrote it off with an “Oh, Miss J… never know what she’s gonna say. Or do!”

But now you’ve taken your disdain for us and our trees to a whole other level. Just minutes, literally minutes, after our lawn-keepers pulled out of the drive yesterday I SAW you, from the PCP’s bedroom window, HURLING pinecones and sticks from your yard into our freshly manicured yard. [Okay, okay, so yard is a very generous word for the hot mess of weeds that grace our plot (that’s another letter for another day) but when said weeds are cut short they do (somewhat from a distance perhaps) resemble grass.] You were so ferociously catapulting the darned things, I feared you would throw your back out. And there I went again… worrying about YOU. The neighborly thing to do.

So, what do you say we just go back to playing nice. You know, talking about your corn and discussing where that lost shoe could have gotten to. Those were the days. (Never thought I’d be saying that in all my days.)

xoxo,
Those “new” people that moved in next door