Great to be back with you all sharing some great life experiences, of course, as of now, from home because I'm still recovering from Covid, so there's not much I can do these days.
And it's in part thanks to Covid that people have found other ways to enternain themselves, in a country with poor internet reception and with an economic crisis to top it all. Domino tournaments are the most common setting in this part of my town, that, and kids playing with their bikes, and adults sharing anecdotes and loud vulgar music. That's quite a turndown, right? Maybe the title has a bit of clickbait, for what I'm about to share is not that lovely.
I have written about some of my neighbors before, we have the quiet ones, the gossipy ones, the loud ones, the gangsta's, a wide spectrum of possibilities from one block to another, and we are sandwiched in the middle. We've never been the kind of neighbors who are peeping into other people's business, we don't participate in the current gatherings, and don't bother others because everyone has the right to do what they want, within the law of course. But there's a fine line between what's punishable by law, and what's punishable by common sense, respect, and proper education.
So let's see, my house is a fifty-year-old house, nothing fancy, not ultra big, is comfortable is what it is. My room, with its 50-year-old window, collides with our backyard gate, our garage, and then there's the next house, with nothing but a concrete edging separating the borderline between lands.
This is the view from my window.
Last night, like many other nights, those neighbors had visitors, and like always, they were making too much noise, and we just minded our own business, we let them be, it was early in the evening and as long as they don't bother us, everything was fine. By 10pm, I'm in bed trying to sleep and feeling rather uneasy because the chest pain isn't backing down, when Zeus, our dog, approaches the backyard gate that's next to my window and starts to bark like crazy.
Naturally, at first, I thought that he was just barking at the kids who were playing ball at that hour of the night, but he kept going with such force that I instantly opened my window to see what was going on.
Guess what? It was a man peeing in the neighbor's wall. Yes, peeing.
I got angry and shouted to the guy and told him to take his business elsewhere, then there came another, this one was worse, he was on a bicycle and didn't even get off the bike, sitting on the bike, he took out his pipi and started to unleash nature. I yelled at him, he looked at me as if I was crazy, and got on with his business. Man, I got mad.
Instantly, I was out the door and some of the kids greeted me fondly since we've never had problems with their parents and are always polite and respectful. I asked the eldest of the marriage to look for his mom because I needed a word with her. She came out of the house, and I said hello, and apologized for the hour in which I was bothering her. I continued and said:
Please, I came to ask you if it isn't too much trouble, that you speak with your guests and ask them that they don't pee in that spot. I know that it is on your wall, but your wall is in front of my bedroom window, and the smell goes directly to me, on top of that, it is distasteful and disrespectful, that I have to see people peeing in front of my window, especially visitors of your house which I suspect, have fully functioning bathrooms.
She didn't say a word, and when I turned around, the guy on the bike was behind me listening to what I was saying, moving his head up and down I'm guessing in compliance. I continued:
Everybody is free to do what they want, but if I don't go to other people's houses and do my business in their surroundings, I shouldn't have to put up with other people coming to my home and doing the same.
The husband came and asked what was wrong, and she told him what had happened, and he said with a smirk on his face, "I doubt it was at your window". That pissed me off and I was ready to let out all my anger, but I didn't and replied:
It was in front of my window and I saw it, and I don't want to make a big fuss out of this but, would you be ok if it was you who has to see another man doing his business in front of your bedroom window?
He instantly and without recrimination said that I was right, so I said good night and came back home, to my inhaler because I couldn't breathe.
I remembered that years ago, about half a kilometer from my house, someone had the brilliant idea of opening a nightclub for thugs. And I say thugs because you should have seen the kind of people that frequented that place, and time said I was right because the mayor's office closed it down for illicit business that happened there on top of the hundreds of reports of disorderly conduct amongst other things.
Well, people from that place used to come to that spot between our houses and used it as a public restroom. Every night for 6 months we had visitors from all over the town going pipi of that spot. Sometimes we yelled, sometimes we called the police, sometimes we just let them be, but every morning of those six months our house smelled like a gas station bathroom and we had to clean it every day, with our neighbors, because the smell was awful.
At that time, there wasn't much that we could do because they came from different parts of town, and we didn't know them and didn't know how they could respond to our claims. This time is different, this time is the neighbors, their family, and friends that are using that space, which is theirs and ours, as a public bathroom, and with complete disregard of the fact that three women are living in this house, and women or not, we deserve respect.
The Gif banner was made by me using Canva.
