Love thy Neighbor

OK, so check this out and tell me what you think.

The situation unfolds as such: My brother is seventeen, nice kid, very, very well liked. Over the years, my sister and my brother have been the target of the occasional TP attack on the house. Harmless stuff except that the cleanup can be a drag. I learn that TPing is not something you do to people you hate, aparently it's a friendly joke you pull on a friend. Makes sense because it is fairly benign.

So in all the years we've lived there, were the only ones that ever got hit, with the very occasional exception of the local highschool PE coach who lives just down the street from us. Nobody has ever missed our house and hit an innocent bystander by accadent.

So, last night, my brother throws a party. It goes very well, and aside from my brothers former girlfriend being flirted with openly by another friend of his (who has a girlfriend), nothing was even a little bit out of sorts. Good clean party, nice kids highschool kids, etc...

Now, I cannot, for the life of me, remember clearly wether or not the neighbors hosue across the street was unmolested when I left. It could have been, but I don't remember that being the case. But I will say this, and back it up. None of the kids who were there seemed to be the TP type. They just weren't pranksters, with the exception of my brother. Beyond which, as far as I could tell (and I was there to oversee for just this purpose) none of them ever left the house except when my brother went to buy hotdog buns.

Also...nobody there knew the across the street neighbor in so far as I could tell. No reason to do anything to them. So I drive up this morning to go into work, and their yard is quite thouroughly TP'd. A few hours later, an unfortunate thing happened.

The neighbor whose house it is, comes over to our house, rings the doorbell. I'm neck deep in papers and so is my dad (whom I work for), so I ask Mom to get the door, she does.

The neighbor lady proceeds to tell my mom (in a bright, happy neighbor voice) that their yard got TP'd. And she knows that we've been hit numerous times before, and she knows that there was a party here last night (all in the same, chipper tone of voice). Then she proceeds to remind my mom that her son is only four, and he's even now out cleaning up the TP from the yard, and that she has an ailing grandmother that's living with them, and she really doesn't have the time to deal with this...

Never actually asked for anything. Never actually said what she wanted. Everybody's seen this, and we've all probably done it before at some point. Wanted the other person to feel guilty, to be embarrased because we ourselves have been inconvienenced. That being said, the entire idea ticked me off. My mother went through the roof. Actually stormed across the street and started an argument over it. She was furious at the insinuation, or more accurately, the assumption. That simply because her son was a teenager and our house had been TP'd before, that we were automatically responsable for her house being TP'd. When she initially came over to our door, my mom brought up the fact that in all the years it'd been happening, nobody had ever, even once, hit someone elses house by mistake, or design.

Now, weather or not it was personal, or their house just got hit at random by some maurading prankster, we'll never know. What we do know is that it was not the work of anyone at the party, because...they never left untill the very end. They might possibly have come back later...but why? Why hit a random neighbor? But this is almost totally unimportant really. The annoying thing was that she came over, and did the "I'm going to insinuate and blame but not actually come out and say it becuase I've been inconvienenced and I want you to know I think it's your fault" schtick. Cowardly. Or maybe just childish. Which would be nicely ironic considering that her beef with us was motivated by something which she doubtlessly thought was "immature".

My mom was upstairs, after it happened, rueing into her Blog about her less than adult behavior. She told me that she wished she'd just asked, "OK, What is it that you want?". Because, she pointed out, when someone is going off on one of these kicks, that question stops them cold. Because they don't actually want anything, except to make sure that you know that they blame you. When my mom went over, and had her words, she then started cleaning up the TP. The husband of the hosue told her, "Oh no, that's OK you dont' need to do that", to wit she replied, "You came to me!"

He was embarrased. He'd let his wife go over and do her adolessent complaining, but when my mom actually called the bluff and went over there to do something about it, he flinched.

Exactly what her theory on why we were somehow responsable for her house being TP'd was, is a little unclear. She seemed to just intimate that becuase we had a teenage boy living in the house, a house which had been repeatedly TPd, that it had to be related to him. That perhaps his friends had TP'd her house just to be mischevious. Not a bad intellectual leap, but she had no evidence, and only nebulous speculation as to motive, but regardless, it got her to come over and whine about it. The logic of her argument ran thus: If some gang bangers do a drive by shooting, but miss the guy they were trying to kill and hit me by mistake, I get to blame the intended victim.

I suppose who I ought to feel sorry for is her, the neighbor lady. I mean, what kind of person does that? It's toilet paper, not toxic waste. So your house got TP'd, what happened to just fixing it yourself? Not that we'd have been above helping. In fact, if she'd just come over and said, "Look, we got TP'd last night, it's never happend to us before, so I'm pretty sure it had something to do with your party, I'd appreciate it if you'd come over and help us clean it up" we'd have jumped right to it. But her solution, was to walk across the street, and let us know just how inconvienenced she was by it, and how she didn't have the time to deal with something like this, as though we were somehow to blame, but did'nt actually have the balls to actually say it.

May I ask a question which I really, really, really do not mean in a sexist way? Why do women do this? I'm serious. I'm not saying that men never do, but I've seen women do it way more often. Why the prevarication? Why not just say what's on your mind?

So what would have been the Christian response to that situation? If she'd come over and been rude about it, turning the other cheek would have been the response, which would have meant being meek about it, and going and cleaning up the TP without complaint. If she'd been honest, and forthright, the same response would have applied. But how do you respond to someone who whines?

What is the Christian response to deliberate childishness from an adult? It's times like this when I wonder if some of the rebukes the Apostles get in the four gospels, when they were actually occuring, didn't have the tone of, "Idiot. Here, I'll spell it out for you." I think they may have. And here is the reason. When someone comes to you and behaves this way, it's not a misunderstanding. It's also not an assault on anything but your patience. So there is no other cheek to turn. The best solution, and please, someone who reads this Blog comment on this bit here, is to simply tell them they're being childish, that you refuse to dignify it, and close the door.

The reason my mom didn't have this kind of grown up, mature reaction? Simple.

The woman is a housewife. And I'm not talking about one of those, Uber-hard working ones who really, really does have a backbreaking job. Such a person would be a lot more worldly and less shallow. She's a former cheerleader, got married got pregnant and stayed home kind of girl. To boot, she lives across the street from her sister: Identical same story, right down to the matching uniforms. (note: this description is not a steriotype, it's litterally true of these two women)

Women like this can drive my mother insane, their very existance is distasteful to her. This is because she busted her ass and got a masters degree. But just living this life, however, is nothing to her....until the perky little former cheerleader turned stay at home mommy who's never had to work, comes over to her house and passively agressively whines about her house being TP'd.....and how she doesn't have the time to deal with something like that?

Well...lets just say that while I condemn my mothers reaction, I certianly understand it. And I condemn it precisely because what she said later was right. If she'd really wanted to stick it to cheerleader-mommy girl all she'd needed to do was ask, "OK, what do you want done about it?" She probably didn't have an answer.


So I ask you faithful readers (no pun intended) for your comments and advice. My honest opinion is that the proper response would have been to tell her how childish she was being, and make that the end of things. But I don't know.

God forgive me my ignorance.