The Grinches / die Spielverderber

When we lived in England there was a great show called Neighbours From Hell. England was way ahead of the US on the reality TV thing back in the mid-90s, and each week on this show, a family got to tell the story of their plight with a nasty neighbor. It was hilarious and horrifying at the same time. I only remember one episode where a family lived in a little one-story cottage on a tiny plot of land that was completely surrounded by the property of the neighbor. One day the family came home to find that poplar trees had been planted on the other side of their fence, completely surrounding their house. Lombardy poplars can grow ninety feet tall, at a rate of 6 feet+ a year, and so within a year, this family's house no longer had any natural light coming into it. They had to live with lightbulbs on day and night because of the tree screen this neighbor had planted.

While our neighbors aren't that bad, I would say they do fall into The Grinch category. We have a pair of Grinches, actually, who have lived in the apartment building for forty some years and seem to feel that they are in charge, when they are just meant to be living here like the rest of us. The ones across the hall that have the mistletoe on their door (perhaps appropriate that dung twigs is the full Anglo Saxon translation for mistletoe), we'll call The Dung Twigs since it fits so well. The other Grinches live downstairs, under us. We'll call them The Meat Choppers, which is the literal translation of their last name. Neither The Meat Choppers or The Dung Twigs are warm or friendly people.

The day we moved in, we met The Meat Choppers. After an introduction of names, they informed us of their rules for our apartment: you may not wear high heels because they make too much noise, you may not shake rugs off the balcony but rather out the bathroom window, you may only use one parking space outside, you may only park one bike each in the basement, and on and on. Not so much as a, "Welcome to the neighborhood." Just a list of rules and regulations.

I don't remember meeting The Dung Twigs until the Mrs. knocked on our door to complain about the lint filter. I had just come up from the basement where the communal dryer is with a load of dry clothes. Before I had come up, I had checked the lint filter, wiped it off, and pushed it back in. Little did I know that the rule is you DON'T push it back in, but leave it slightly sticking out, otherwise it suggests it is not clean or ready for the next person. Mrs. Dung Twig informed us of this rule and also, as if a warning, told us that the family before had left the lint filter a mess the entire year. "Toto, you're not in Kansas anymore," we told each other with raised eyebrows.

We are not loud people, and we are not dirty people. Since we've always lived in somewhat communal housing, I think we're more aware than many of how our actions might impact the people living around us. And yet, Mrs. Meat Chopper and Mrs. Dung Twig always seem to be reminding us of the rules. Among our infractions to date:
- There were some tire marks on the wall by the basement where bikes navigate the tight corner from stairs into bike room. Maybe we made them, but maybe we didn't. We got the blame anyway. "Keep the walls clean!" Mrs. Meat Chopper hissed one day when she saw us with our bikes.
- Another day Peter was caught by Mrs. Dung Twig and chastised for laundry that was hanging in the communal drying room (a topic for a blog in 2009). "You need to take your laundry down. You should only leave it in there for a day or two," she said. That day we had no laundry hanging up. Yet.
- "Your students can't store bikes in the bike room," Mrs. Meat Chopper scolded Peter one day. He assured her that the kids all had their bikes with them. "There are more bikes in there than there should be!" she scolded. "Whose could they possibly be?"
- One day there was a knock on our door and Mrs. Dung Twig stood there with a can of oil in her hand. "You door is too squeaky!" she said. "Please oil it."

Yesterday, Mrs. Dung Twig spied me coming from the end of the basement where our storage cage is. I had our wash basket filled with duffel bags and other assorted things I had collected and was taking upstairs. She called out to me. "I used the dryer after you yesterday," she said. "I saw your wash basket down there. The lint filter wasn't very clean. Be sure you make it nicer." Now I had cleaned the lint filter, carefully, and even picked some fuzzies from the compartment where the filter goes. What more is there to do with a lint filter? It's just a lint filter!

Today, Peter was walking up the stairs and accosted by Mrs. Meat Chopper. "We worked for 47 years," she said, "so that we could sleep until 8:00 am. There is so much crashing and banging from your bedroom in the mornings that we can't sleep!" Huh? We happen to have a very quiet morning routine. I wake up first, sneak to the kitchen to make coffee, and then go to the living room. I tiptoe so I don't wake up Nikolas. When Peter wakes up, he sneaks out to the living room or sits in silence working on the computer in the dark. When Nikolas wakes up, he usually trots out to the living room and the fun begins (but quiet fun, because The Dung Twigs have their bedroom on the other side of our living room wall, and we wouldn't want to disturb them now, would we?).

We were watching The Grinch Who Stole Christmas tonight, and I was struck by the similarities between The Grinch and our neighbors. Perhaps, as a peace offering, we should invite them over for a viewing. Or perhaps, we'll just stop trying to be good neighbors and stomp around in high heels and bang pot lids together wherever we go. They might as well have something real to complain about, right?