Madder than hell - and immensely sad.

Regular readers of this blog will remember tales of my “neighbour from hell”.  She and I share a driveway.  Our car ports are side-by-side, with no dividing wall. She is a very angry and hostile woman. 

She has cursed me out on many occasions.  She has called me an “s.o.b”; a “m-f”; a “white m.f.” – and many other nasty things.

I sometimes wonder if she is mentally ill, or if she is a problem drinker.  

The there are days on which I think that she is simply mean and nasty.

This “neighbour from hell” has, from time to time, engaged various “handymen”.  

I have noted that after a week or so of work, she would yell and scream at these folk.

It’s not that I am nosy - but I have been unable escape this “yelling and screaming”.  She yells and screams from within her home, and I hear it from inside mine.

I heard it again last week.  I could not miss it as she yelled and screamed at a “30-something” young man, who had been doing some work in her car-port.  I watched as he left her home.  His shoulders were down.  He seemed to be very dejected.

When I returned from a shopping trip today I saw that he was back, for he had parked his SUV in a way which blocked my driveway.  He quickly apologised and moved his SUV.

I made a guess about the situation and whispered:  “Has she shafted you?”  “Yes” he replied, “for $200, and she called me very name under the sun”.  I told him that this did not surprise me since I also had been tongue-lashed by her.

He commended my patience with such a neighbour.  I confessed that I was not particularly patient, but that I had learned to keep utterly silent in the face of her verbal abuse.

My heart went out to him.  I hate the fact that he has been treated in such a shitty way.

I was frustrated with my own powerlessness to help this young man.