When Neighbors Are Jerks...The Update

Mr. Donaghy was outside watering the tree the city had planted on the sidewalk in front of our house. Water was everywhere as he was hosing down everything in sight like a little boy playing with a fire hose. Mind you, it was dark and he wanted to play. I understand.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a young man sitting on the retaining wall of the front yard of our jerky neighbors.

"Oh, I'm sorry! Did I get you?" Mr. Donaghy asked worried that he unceremoniously hosed this poor lad down.

"Naw, man, I'm okay." the young man replied.

Mr. Donaghy was now starting to wonder who this young man was and why was he sitting in the neighbor's front lawn?

"Hey, um, I live next door here...I was going to come over and talk to you guys about the tree. We didn't mean to put everything on your side of the fence but it fell that way and we didn't want to clean up your yard without you guys being at home." the young man said.

"We had our gardeners come over and clean it up." Mr. Donaghy replied on the verge of getting very angry as he remembered what a mess was in our garden not so very long ago.

"How much did they charge you? We'll pay for it. We meant to clean it up and sorry that you had to pay someone for it." the young man offered.

"It's okay. We took care of it." Mr. Donaghy said.

"Like I said, man, sorry about that." the young man repeated.

"Just next time, don't throw anything on our side of the fence, okay?" Mr. Donaghy said.

I am so relieved that although our neighbors have a problem with communication, they aren't the jerks I thought they were. And, thus, Neighbors From Hell crisis averted.

Thank God.