Whenever I turn on my street after coming home from work I immediately zoom in on my house and the surrounding houses around it to figure out what obstacles I am going to have to maneuver around to get into my driveway . I never really know what I am going to see on a particular night. Monday it could be a troop of little kids running unsupervised in the middle of the street. Tuesday it could be the stray dogs and cats chasing after each other. Wednesday it could be an impromptu block party. Thursday it could be random beater cars blocking all the space around our house. Friday it could be an unorganized game of street ball taking place on a broken, eight foot hoop with a certain dad dunking over several eight year old kids. During the summer, it could be all the above. It is always a surprise.
Let me begin by saying that I feel very fortunate to live in a nice house with three great roommates. We have a four bedroom-two bath house with a nice living room area, awesome deck, good kitchen, spacious backyard, and a great downstairs area. The two bedrooms upstairs are occupied by two Kalispell guys, Dan and Nick, two of my best friends that I met in college. When it comes to downstairs, I occupy one of the rooms and Fawn*, a gorgeous law student from Rygate, Montana, occupies the other. The four of us get along great and have good times together. While our place is inhabited by good, normal people, the houses around us are not. Welcome to Columbine Road…
Okay, I will be fair and stereotype our house. We are the young, college aged partiers. Someone is always leaving, someone is always going. Beer cans and bottles do routinely overflow when we take out the trash. Our lawn could be kept in better shape. Sometimes we might drive a little too fast leaving the neighborhood but we do try our best to go well under the speed limit. But, we are always respectable and considerate.
Let me first start off by characterizing our next door neighbors to our left. They hate us. The house is made up of a married couple probably in their late thirties to early forties and their two kids. Really for no good reason, they are complete jerks. They never gave us a chance. The only time they will talk to us is to bitch about how we are making too much noise or how our yard is not clean. They must have told their kids that if we get remotely close to them they will automatically drop dead because whenever we get near them they retreat about thirty feet. They won’t even look at our dog. They are stuck up and rude. They have called the cops on us. They have called Nick’s dad (the owner of the house) to snivel about the smallest things. They irritate me.
Directly across the street we have a lesbian couple. Intriguing, huh? Don’t hold your breath, they are in their late fifties to early sixties, and let me tell you, they are a couple of rough customers! It is popular in society to think that a lesbian couple in American society usually consists of a masculine one and a feminine one….the people who live across from us are both masculine. They both smoke like chimneys. I go out to get the paper at 6am in the morning and one of them is already outside puffing away, even if it is -10 degrees out. I get home from work and they are out smoking. Late night just as you can probably predict, they are out smoking. Always friendly to us, I always catch myself guessing what exactly is going on over there. Routinely there are about three to four toddler aged kids that run rampant on their cluttered lawn. Then there is a boy who is about sixteen who is always hanging out over there. Additionally, there is a woman in her late twenties who is always coming and going as well. I have several theories on how they are all connected together but then again sometimes I do try to devote my thoughts to more important things.
Next door to our right we have the weirdest dude you will ever meet. He is a flat out hippie. Him and his granola wife have two young children who have probably seen some crazy things in their short lives. This guy welcomed himself to the neighborhood by knocking on our door at 12:30am on a Sunday night to ask for an extension cord. His front and back lawn is littered with random shit. It is like he is having a year-long yard sale. He has absolutely no problem laying out his useless junk on our yard if he can’t contain it all in his. The guy is baked just about every time we see him. We are 90% sure that he is growing pot plants in his backyard. He meanders around his yard on the hour every hour. I am pretty sure the guy does not have a job. He has made friends with the lesbian couple across the street and has tried to express his friendship by pawning his lawn crap off on them. The other night I was home by myself and heard the door knock. As I walked upstairs to answer it the hippie OPENENED OUR DOOR without asking and yelled out to see if anyone was home. It was 10pm and pitch dark out. It did not sit well with me. Even after I told him to never do that again he asked me for help. Being the nice guy I am I helped him. Of course it was a beyond weird favor. For some reason he had this heavy concrete pillar on top of his car that I had to help him take off and move to the backyard. Why he had to have this done at 10pm I have no idea.
Completing our surroundings, we do have neighbors directly in back of us. We like them the best…they only live in the house about 20% of the year.
But I would be omitting an important piece of the Columbine Rd puzzle if I did not tell you about our neighbors who live one house down from us on the right. The house is owned by a rugby player in his early forties who has several screws lose. He lives with his wife who is just as crazy and wild as him. They have a few kids. If this guy catches wind that we are having a party at our house, he is there in a heartbeat. Even if we just crack open a beer, the smell of alcohol must somehow seep down the street and into his nostrils because he will come a-knockin. This guy puts away beer like no other. The fights that him and his wife have are legendary. One time he sent his son’s friend over to our house so he could take a crap in our own toilet!! We did not even really know the son let alone his friend. The guy just didn’t want the kid answering nature’s call in his own house so he transferred him to us.
As you can probably tell by the cast of characters I have just introduced you to, things can get a little interesting at times. All of these people have kids, and their kids have friends. All of these families have multiple animals as well. Throw all of that in with the high urban deer population we have in our neighborhood and you can imagine that once school gets out and the parents get home from work (the ones that do work) the street gets pretty hoppin. With these people, there is no such thing as safety. Watching for cars is an afterthought. Proper parental supervision is a concept never explored. During the summer, Columbine Rd is at its absolute worst. Kids and animals take over the streets while parents/guardians do who knows what. When I was eight years old, I was in the house by 8pm. These kids have curfews later than most high school seniors on their prom nights. This is no lie when I tell you that the kids on this street are still shrieking their lungs out at MIDNIGHT. You know, I love the Fourth of July just as much as the next guy but when fireworks are still getting set off in the middle of August I feel that is a little bit of overkill. Also, I just think it is a respect issue as well as a safety issue to control your animals and keep them contained in your yard. There is no need to turn our street into a petting zoo. We already have our own dog, we don’t need to scoop up any more poop from our yard.
I do have to stop complaining before I really start sounding like Mr. Wilson. Before I started writing this post I asked myself if I could change my street from what it is now to a street with no kids and no noise would I do so? Even for all the complaining I just did, I don’t think I would. Even if the kids have no supervision and are out of control, at least they are having fun. And you know what? I have talked to most of the neighbor kids and they are all wonderful. It is not their fault their parents are dum dums. So what would I change about the personnel of my street? Well, the lesbian couple can stay. The rugby guy’s family can stay. The people behind us can definitely stay. I would love to eighty-six our next door neighbors though. I have no respect for the bitter people to the left and I just have a tough time putting up with hippie dude to the right. Maybe I should work on being more neighborly.
Hope you enjoyed the tour around my street. It is definitely interesting and unique. Stop on by sometime and I will introduce you to these eccentric people (except for our next door neighbors to the left). Until then, get to know your own neighbors, otherwise you will never really know how weird they really are. Don’t Blink.
* - Fawn, I know you are probably reading this so shout out to you!! Hahaha
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