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I don't know whether anyone's ever watched an episode of Australian show "Neighbours" but the theme song is what inspired the headline... hehehe
I've always had such luck with my neighbours. Being a good one and having good ones means that I'm fortunate enough to have had either respectful co-existences or actual proper friendships with them.
Wendy and LuLu [chihuahua] in the townhouse behind me where I used to live. Still … Read more »
Pregnant and buzzing like an angry bee, and mate, sinewy with white trash rat face yelling at all hours. Steady streams of friends passing out under umbrellas on couches on a concrete lawn. Cats and pitbulls running through our open front door. Shouting, broken windows again and again and the garage sale that stood unattended for two weeks before their final eviction. The mountain of trash they left, full of … Read more »
Here in Queens, 15 story co-ops aren't unusual. But sometimes, their occupants are. My wife and I lived on the fourth floor with a terrace facing the street. It was a nice quiet little one bedroom that was sun drenched most of the day. This was our first apartment together and every experience was new. New at keeping house, new at being responsible for every bill … Read more »
So I had work in two hours. I just needed my uniform to be clean by then. I had six quarters for the laundromat downstairs.
That night was gearing up to be shitty. There had been steady rainfall since I woke. I had to work. And I had a bum windshield wiper. Not only was I working, but I was risking my life … Read more »
I live in a six story high rise in East Providence, Rhode Island, so I suppose I have many neighboors, but there is one that sticks out to me like a soar thumb. Actually, make that a partially amputated thumb with gangrene.
I'm a person who keeps my head down and tries to get where I need to be as fast … Read more »
There was this old man who lived across the street from me as a kid, in a trailer park. He was old, wizened black man who worked at
the corner convenience store, cooking the chicken. He had a soft,
kind, face, with a scraggly white beard. When he'd walk down the
sidewalk, all of the neighborhood stray cats would follow him like
the Pied Piper. He … Read more »
Tiffany knocked on the door and asked if she could use the phone. Her cell phone was out of minutes. While she talked, I went into my office and got one of my novels. When she finished her phone conversation, I gave the book to her, my gift to my young neighbor.
She was amazed that I was an author. Some people seem to think authors are such a rare and … Read more »
They were much older than I. Bold. Ugly. Big. and never said anything than "hello" to me. I knew one of them was working in financial things by the way he dressed and the hour he came back at home.
Once we've cracked their internet firewall, and seen all their private pictures and videos. We had a fight when they discovered that we were stealing their bandwidth.
The … Read more »
Mon voisin a les cheveux blancs et des taches sur les mains. Il fume la pipe. Chez lui, ça sent le tabac et la vieille confiture - pourtant il ne m'en donne jamais. Il n'aime pas trop quand on fait du bruit, Nigel et moi. Il dit qu'avant la guerre, c'était mieux.
Mon voisin a un paillasson en forme de coeur.
Reginald (don’t ever call him “Reggie†- he has high blood pressure) knows how to stand out from the crowd. He wears a tie 24/7, drinks beer from exquisite glassware, even outside, and uses plastic cigarette tips to keep his fingers milky white. His home is impossibly immaculate. A most interesting phenomenon is his greener-than green grass during a summer water crisis. On windy days we are all … Read more »
I did not know his actual name. He used a graffiti "tag" that referred to an insect. I cannot mention which, though years have passed and said bug may be dead, such was the fear he inspired. On the other hand I don't think he'd be much of a reader.
The Bug dealt drugs and had an ear for music, a very big ear: the woofers and … Read more »
The neighbors called us trashy becuase frequently the front lawn was strewn with toys. We have bats and balls, hockey sticks and nets, blankets for picnics and pitchers for lemonade. We are a family.
Where the other neighbors heard shouts of glee, of children playing and parties for toddlers they heard offensive noise.
They never returned balls that went over the fence. They never smiled. They hated us.
We … Read more »
On several occasions, I'd be working in my garden and knew my unfriendly next-door neighbor was in her back yard beyond the fence. I would hear a ringing telephone and her door slam as she raced indoors to answer it. Before I moved away, I never did have a chance to tell her that the local mockingbird was imitating the ring of her telephone.
It was a Saturday morning, and I awoke to a knocking on my window. Since I lived in the crummy basement studio apartment of the building, anytime anyone in the building had to flip their breaker, they had to come downstairs to the utility room to do it, and I had to let them in. In my blue cloud pajamas (matching button-up shirt and pants, of course) I opened the … Read more »
I came back to my apartment late one night, and I heard moaning in the hall. Being naive, I thought someone was hurt , so I walked down to the end of the hall, but no one was there. I walked back to my door, opened it, and the moans were louder! My next door neighbors were getting it on in their living room, and it was like I … Read more »
My neighbor ran outside in a blanket to rescue her dog from the bushes where it was hung up. While she fiddled with the chain and the branch her blanket fell off. She was completly nude. I'm just glad my kids didn't see.
There once was a neighbor who lived downstairs, directly underneath us. A short, stocky, little battle-ax with gray hair, always untamed, mangled in a bun. Her smile was conflicted with a lone rotten tooth apparent in gapping gums. We dubbed her the ‘cat-lady’. Not to be confused with ‘catwoman’ sexy, fem, fatale! No, no, the cat-lady was mother to at least 15 cats and one permanently stoned adult son. Our … Read more »
Thank God, Jacob a lonely widower in his sixties lived accross the street and came to my rescue. Things always broke down and with the kids. I fixed him a meal when I had a few extra dollars and the kids loved to hear his stories about the old country (Ireland). I wondered why Jacob's children never came to visit him.
After days of not seeing him in … Read more »
The house two doors down sat empty for nearly a year when the owner finally moved in. Immediately, I sensed something wasn't right and went to great lengths to avoid him. For the most part, he kept to himself until he came home with a small, white dog, which would periodically run away. One afternoon, he came by, looking for the dog and by the … Read more »
My neighbor across the street, Simone, was remodeling her house. Simone is a nice woman, about 60, very quiet. She lives alone. We used to feed each other’s cats when we went away on vacation.
The remodeling took a long time. She moved out for months and a bunch of unruly construction workers moved in. Well, they were there from 7 a.m. until 3. All day, … Read more »
As part of our new webcomic, Next-Door Neighbor, we thought it appropriate to have a little contest. Tell us your best true next-door neighbor story, and the winning tale will be matched with an artist and transformed into a webcomic and included as the final installment of Next-Door Neighbor.
No matter how close or how far, we all live next to someone, and we all have a Next-Door Neighbor story. With that in mind, editor Dean Haspiel asked some of his favorite storytellers and cartoonists to create their favorite NDN stories so we could share them with you.
By submitting an entry, you are granting SMITH the right to reprint or republish that entry online or in print, as well as make any necessary edits. See SMITH's terms of service for complete details.
This contest ends September 1, 2008. Prizes are not redeemable for cash and must be accepted as awarded. Winners are decided at the discretion of SMITH judges and all decisions are final. SMITH reserves the right to change the contest rules. Enter as often as you want. SMITH reserves the right to reprint or republish all entries.
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