Bad Neighbors

We have not had great luck here in St Louis.  We have one fabulous neighbor directly below us who showers the kids with love, our surrogate grandma.  But the rest … not so much.

The first month we lived here, we had a couple incidents.  One day, a man who lived in the condo complex across the street from us marched over to our house at 8 am and informed us that he was going through his complex’s trash and found a letter that had been addressed to us and we were NEVER to put any trash in their dumpster or he would report us to the police.  Heaven forbid.  I had just been sitting in the car the day before going through the mail while the kids were sleeping and just tossed some of the junk mail in there.  Seriously, he was kind of creepy and now I am much more careful about throwing anything away.  It gave me a bad vibe about the people here … and I had confrontation, but surely it was just a one-time thing.

Then, when my parents visited in Spring Break, they parked in our parking space.  A side note, we have a very tiny assigned parking space behind the condo complex with huge concrete pillars between every two spots, so we park directly next to one person, but they don’t actually live next to us in the building.  So, the girl who we park next to came and complained that my parents weren’t parked well and we needed to move the car immediately.  Hard to put my finger on it, but the way she said it was definitely rude.

Fine, but then a few months later she leaves a very rude condescending note on our car “Please, please, please park on your side”, which is perplexing to us since we are always on our half and never on hers and are very careful.  So, we talk to her and she says, “Well, sometimes it’s hard to park, blah blah blah”, but I felt like she was just trying to intimidate us to keep us from parking there.  Whatever.  We were even more careful (and I was not liking the people here just a little bit more).

Now, we get to Sunday morning.  Katsu goes out to go to early church meetings and someone has parked behind our car so we can’t leave.  It’s her family.  Basically, she had bought a new car a couple weeks ago.  And it has a scratch on it.  And so it must be our fault.  So, get his now …. SHE HAS CALLED THE COPS AT 8 AM ON A SUNDAY MORNING to come get us because we scratched her car.

Except, that, you see, we didn’t.  On the “days in question”, I had not even driven the car.  And Katsu hadn’t come close to her car when he drove.  And since she bought her new car, I haven’t even parked next to it and parked on the street instead because she hasn’t parked close enough to her side and I don’t want to mess with it.

So, we had the delightful experience of being interviewed by the cops bright and early Sunday morning.  And of course, the scratches on her car don’t match ours, because we didn’t do it.

But seriously – what will be next?  More cop calls?  A small-claims case?  We just aren’t parking in our spot anymore.  It’s not worth the pain.

I hate St. Louis.