the Mayor is a busy and hardworking man on my street who has taken it upon himself to police us little people from his house on the hill.

I used to be really good friends with his daughter. growing up we were always together, I was over their house a lot like she was over mine so I'm not really sure what made him lose his mind.. perhaps he got old. maybe he was always crazy and was born with it.. I remember hearing about his brother who lost his mind MANY years back, apparently his brother beat a few men senseless.. all went to the hospital except for one... then he went to jail.

I remember all the times the people littering would drive him crazy. all the times he got in his car and followed people to their homes to throw the garbage they dropped into their car windows or on their lawns, how he made large colorful signs and found ways to zip tie garbage cans to the stop signs and telephone poles on the corners.

I remember hearing about his daughter... from his daughter, my friend, and I was so confused. I thought she was talking about herself in third person until I realized she had a sister much older than her that went to the same school as I did and who ran away from home because her parents were way too crazy. she said that her room was originally a different room but as soon as her sister left, climbing through the window and out onto the deck, they redid the room and moved her in there, putting big things like trees and a gazebo to block the windows. she said from that point on her parents were different, they hovered and lingered more, they pulled her out of school and enrolled her in expensive private school, blaming the public school for not only her sister's disobedience but probably the sister's gayness as well. I remember her parents installing cameras around the inside of their house as well as secretly having spyware in the TV's, phones and computers to record times, conversations, passwords.... she found out because we shared account information for a game that we were playing together so sometimes I would go on her character to collect things for her or level her up, vice versa. she said that whenever one of her friends would comment about a sign on at a weird time for her she would just assume it was me... until she signed on my account to help me out by collecting when I got punished for something I didn't do or deserve. she had never signed on my account before so she thought everything was ok.... then her mom, the same lady who would slap her openly in a store or yell and embarrass her in front of classmates and friends, asked her if she had anything to say for herself.. anything she was hiding or lying about. of course she was confused, she had no idea what was happening and her mother probably didn't explain anything either. she ended up grounded and started to ask to use my phone and computer more often, even when we were over her house. She admitted to me that she was using my stuff to talk to some guy she had a crush on and that she hid the number of an unapproved guy in the hole in her wall she got from kicking a soccer ball in the house. when her dad found out the whole only got bigger, he called that kid countless times over a week threatening him and then made a deal with her that if he would answer her call and talk to them they would allow her to see him again but of course he never answered the phone. gradually we stopped hanging out with all the activities they had her doing but at some point I had graduated from school and she was going to too. They were going to throw this huge party for her and invite their friends and family but days before he flipped out on my family about our fence.

At the time, before we even knew about plans for a party.. it was Spring and we had wanted to replace the rotted out pieces of fence before the dogs got out. We weren't going to ask for money but since it was originally his fence that he put and we shared that one side, we figured it would be safe just to let them know. From what I heard it went well, the mayor had said he wanted to fix it but with him being a really good handyman and master carpenter his back was shot, he asked for some time, again no worries we weren't asking him to fix it or anything. we actually needed more time to decide on the fence since we were going to go for the full perimeter fence and not just at one side or section. he said nothing about a party and nothing about not having money, we weren't even asking for money.

weeks went by and with no word from him we decided to go ahead and order the fence. it took days to be delivered and once it was delivered it look another few days to put it up ourselves. they didn't offer help or money, we didn't ask. we did it fast like that not only for our dogs but also not to really inconvenience anyone. just as we finished the fence and planting some of the plants and flowers we got it had started raining hard so we went inside. apparently this bothered the mayor. it rained the rest of the day... let's say it was a Sunday with work the next day, obviously no one came out for the rest of the night to do anything with the fence. the next day, Monday all day people would be working.. at least on our side. the mayor can't work long with his back apparently.

we came back home to the mayor's wife waiting for us. she nicely but very awkwardly said that we should finish the fence because they were going to be having a party Friday. we apologized for the inconvenience and finished the fence, planting some more before it got dark and rained again. the same thing happened, the mayor was unhappy thinking we left garbage for him to clean or didn't care much about his property even though it was raining. Tuesday it rained so the progress was halted but Wednesday we went back after work to fix a panel of the fence, we were even nice enough to plant some flowers on their side of the fence, put some dirt and fertilizer with grass seed down too ..yeah it wouldn't grow until later but it was something right? we were happy with the job on both sides and sealed the fence again, officially done with the fence. no one said anything, no one gave money... the next day Wednesday or Thursday he went out there and ripped all the flowers we planted on his side out, he moved all the dirt away and blew the seeds away. we didn't say anything to them about it. they got ready for their party on Friday and partied all weekend long... some time during the next week he typed out an anonymous note with all of our transgressions from living next to them and put it in our mailbox. we knew it was him right away and when we asked him about it he played dumb and then him and my stepdad had a screaming match outside. for the next few days he would randomly walk out on his deck, yell out of his house windows or from his porch "YOU'RE MAKING ME FIGHT WITH MY FAMILY" and play loud music in his house and in his yard and cars. he would prank call the police like if we were doing it and set off his car alarms and put car alarms at all hours too. to this day he's never apologized, his wife never apologized or said anything about his behavior, same like his daughter. I thought at the very least she would say something but no. he's dead to us, they all are.. but his behavior has only gotten worse. he's nitpicked other neighbors and sent them letters and had screaming matches in the front yard.. to the point where he messed with a Mexican and you had ALLLLL the Spanish from the area on our block and in his yard at 3am shirtless, chasing him around screaming... even the Spanish women were out there cursing them while holding their kids.

Stories in the same category