Stoop Kid
Aug 10, 2017 12:40:08 GMT -5
Post by 40oz on Aug 10, 2017 12:40:08 GMT -5
In a two weeks, it will be the fifth year I've owned my house. My home is a twin, which means it's basically two symmetrical houses stuck together, divided by a semi-soundproof wall and I share a front porch with my neighbor. When I moved in, my neighbors were great people; a husband and wife that are maybe 10 years older than me, with two little girls. They were very friendly people. About two years ago, the family planned to have a third baby and they decided that they've accumulated too much stuff and that the house would be too crowded to raise a family in, so they decided to put their house up for rent and move to a larger single home closer to the city.
The tenants moved in. Two adult women, sisters. One is a teacher's aid at an elementary school, the other is fucking insane.
The school teacher is divorced with young adult children who are living on their own, but can't get their shit together. She works long hours, and her maternal instincts are too strong to let her kids fend for themselves in the real world, so she is always doing favors for them, and in the meantime can't get her own shit together. She's been paying rent on her side of the building and only spends about 10% of her time actually living there. The neglect on the home is blatantly apparent, and her living room is littered with stacks of unopened moving boxes. She's been living there for two years.
The other is on disability for paranoid schizophrenia and takes medication to calm her nerves. She's friendly... most of the time (more on that later,) although she doesn't know when to end a conversation. Usually when I just want to say hi, she will go on a 15 minute tangent that is difficult to politely excuse myself from. She also smells like a pool hall. She smokes so many ciggarettes that it couldn't be impossible for her to have any hobbies. She also enjoys the 'fresh air' so she spends the majority of her time sitting on the front porch.
Last summer, some strange things would happen, which was the beginning of tar lung's descent into fucking loony town. She would walk the dog each afternoon. One day I drove home from work and pulled into a parking space in front of my house as she was leaving for the walk. I was still in the drivers seat of my car picking up some trash I wanted to throw out before exiting the vehicle. As I was getting out, she was walking with the dog down the street away from me, her head facing forward. She lifted her arm up behind her, and gave me the middle finger! This was completely unprecedented and I did nothing to instigate it. But I knew something was off with her for a while so I decided not to take it too personally.
Having been basically living on her own, she felt no obligation to continue taking her schizophrenia medication. This became increasingly evident when she would spend longer hours sitting on the front porch, occasionally standing up to begin pacing back and forth on the porch. You could occasionally hear her uttering short phrases to herself, as if she was thinking out loud. Sometimes she would wear the same outfit multiple days in a row, and she began making her own clothes by cutting off the sleeves to her jackets and sewing patches on them.
My wife was beginning to be concerned. I offered to talk to her about how disturbing she is being to us, but my wife stopped me. Julie had a grandfather who was schizophrenic and they cannot be reasoned with. She warned me not to talk to her because we don't know how unpredictable she can be. I obliged and withdrew my offer. We continued to pretend nothing was wrong while we remained to be completely disengaged with the tv show we were watching from the disturbing phrases our neighbor was bellowing into the wind. Sometimes she would sing.
♪ Anarchy in the government ♪
♪ Anarchy in the government ♪
My wife and I have stopped saying hi to her and made it a point to be not be near her any longer than humanly possible.
It wasn't all bad. Sometimes we could hear her getting in arguments with people who werent there, sometimes it can be pretty entertaining. My wife and I would creep up to the windows to listen in on her tinfoil hat diatribe. One time she was adamantly demanding the 'other' to wake up. She was saying something to the effect that radio towers were instructing everyone what to say, and that only she was capable of independent thought. It was a pretty convincing argument. I've never felt more free than when a paranoid schizophrenic made me so uncomfortable about leaving the house.
Some days people would walk by on the sidewalk mid-conversation. She would shout things completely unprovoked and scare them off. The poor mailman would come with his delivery each morning hoping that he will arrive at the moment she puts out her ciggarette to go in the house, but he couldn't have been more unlucky. Some people were quite disturbed and sometimes affronted. This came to a head when one person was so perturbed by her that she called the police. I wasn't around at the time, but apparently she became confrontational, and the sweat stains on her cut up jacket suggested she was delirious from the heat, and so she was taken to a hospital.
She's back and has been for a while now. She's back on her medication too, which means she's only half as crazy as her normal unmedicated self. She's never done anything to hurt me or damage my property, so I don't really have any claims to use against her, so I just live with the fact that I'm next door neighbors with Stoop Kid.
The tenants moved in. Two adult women, sisters. One is a teacher's aid at an elementary school, the other is fucking insane.
The school teacher is divorced with young adult children who are living on their own, but can't get their shit together. She works long hours, and her maternal instincts are too strong to let her kids fend for themselves in the real world, so she is always doing favors for them, and in the meantime can't get her own shit together. She's been paying rent on her side of the building and only spends about 10% of her time actually living there. The neglect on the home is blatantly apparent, and her living room is littered with stacks of unopened moving boxes. She's been living there for two years.
The other is on disability for paranoid schizophrenia and takes medication to calm her nerves. She's friendly... most of the time (more on that later,) although she doesn't know when to end a conversation. Usually when I just want to say hi, she will go on a 15 minute tangent that is difficult to politely excuse myself from. She also smells like a pool hall. She smokes so many ciggarettes that it couldn't be impossible for her to have any hobbies. She also enjoys the 'fresh air' so she spends the majority of her time sitting on the front porch.
Last summer, some strange things would happen, which was the beginning of tar lung's descent into fucking loony town. She would walk the dog each afternoon. One day I drove home from work and pulled into a parking space in front of my house as she was leaving for the walk. I was still in the drivers seat of my car picking up some trash I wanted to throw out before exiting the vehicle. As I was getting out, she was walking with the dog down the street away from me, her head facing forward. She lifted her arm up behind her, and gave me the middle finger! This was completely unprecedented and I did nothing to instigate it. But I knew something was off with her for a while so I decided not to take it too personally.
Having been basically living on her own, she felt no obligation to continue taking her schizophrenia medication. This became increasingly evident when she would spend longer hours sitting on the front porch, occasionally standing up to begin pacing back and forth on the porch. You could occasionally hear her uttering short phrases to herself, as if she was thinking out loud. Sometimes she would wear the same outfit multiple days in a row, and she began making her own clothes by cutting off the sleeves to her jackets and sewing patches on them.
My wife was beginning to be concerned. I offered to talk to her about how disturbing she is being to us, but my wife stopped me. Julie had a grandfather who was schizophrenic and they cannot be reasoned with. She warned me not to talk to her because we don't know how unpredictable she can be. I obliged and withdrew my offer. We continued to pretend nothing was wrong while we remained to be completely disengaged with the tv show we were watching from the disturbing phrases our neighbor was bellowing into the wind. Sometimes she would sing.
♪ Anarchy in the government ♪
♪ Anarchy in the government ♪
My wife and I have stopped saying hi to her and made it a point to be not be near her any longer than humanly possible.
It wasn't all bad. Sometimes we could hear her getting in arguments with people who werent there, sometimes it can be pretty entertaining. My wife and I would creep up to the windows to listen in on her tinfoil hat diatribe. One time she was adamantly demanding the 'other' to wake up. She was saying something to the effect that radio towers were instructing everyone what to say, and that only she was capable of independent thought. It was a pretty convincing argument. I've never felt more free than when a paranoid schizophrenic made me so uncomfortable about leaving the house.
Some days people would walk by on the sidewalk mid-conversation. She would shout things completely unprovoked and scare them off. The poor mailman would come with his delivery each morning hoping that he will arrive at the moment she puts out her ciggarette to go in the house, but he couldn't have been more unlucky. Some people were quite disturbed and sometimes affronted. This came to a head when one person was so perturbed by her that she called the police. I wasn't around at the time, but apparently she became confrontational, and the sweat stains on her cut up jacket suggested she was delirious from the heat, and so she was taken to a hospital.
She's back and has been for a while now. She's back on her medication too, which means she's only half as crazy as her normal unmedicated self. She's never done anything to hurt me or damage my property, so I don't really have any claims to use against her, so I just live with the fact that I'm next door neighbors with Stoop Kid.