The Nosey One.

Okay Ms. B, here is the rest of the story. I have this nosey neighbor who seems to spend a bit of time "monitoring" other people's situations. Normally I wouldn't consider that a bad thing. Especially when my answer to "you nosey" is "I call it situational awareness, you gotta know when the hell to duck!"

But it seems that a good portion of her ire is directed toward where I live. Not saying she don't have ammo but dang! I know they noisy and ghetto and messy. I know because I complain to them all the time! But why do she got the Detroit Police on speed dial? I mean aside from the noise (which it seems she never calls them on...) they keep it mostly confined to this property. Yet for some reason she feels the need to mind folks business over here.

And why she gotta call the popo on the kids when they just wanna play basketball instead of being in "bored" and causing trouble. She done got about five or six of those portable basketball rims taken by the police. And the kids weren't even near here property. My thing is that if they are ballin' then I can see their asses and know I am safe. One time she did that a couple of days before school. The kids were pissed. And since they were bored AND pissed of course you know mischief followed. So at some point after the police left (yet again) with the basket ball rim, a large brick invited itself into her living room. Via her plate glass window. I guess somebody was trying to deliver a message.

At the same time we were doing the last minute school shopping. So we were three or four cities away at the time. When we came home we noticed a guy putting up some big ass pieces of wood over her window. So we are scratching out heads while unloading bags. Then the teens hanging out let us in on what happened while we were gone. It was a LOL SMDH moment since we all KNEW something like that would happen eventually.

Jump to a week later. My wife gets a letter addressed to her from an insurance company she never did business with. She opens the mail to find out that the insurance company was planning on filing charges/a claim AGAINST OUR SON for the broken window! Which naturally sent her into a tizzy! Especially since you already know we were three cities away at the time of the incident in question.

I managed to get her to calm down while simultaneously getting myself suitably spun up. (I start calm and work up...) We discussed strategy and tactics. Thought about which other windows wanted to join the first one. And thought about which of her attorney friends would most like to earn some extra coin from the lawsuit we were about to file. That lightened the mood somewhat.

Before talking to her friends, we decided to call the insurance company to ask what was their major malfunction before the litigation began. It seems that the insurance adjuster assumed that Mister was involved because his FIRST name was given to the investigator by some unrevealed witness. They backed into a connection to The Wife somehow and bam, the letter. She then promtly informed them that

1. We were not in the city at the time of the incident.
2. She has corroborating witnesses as to times and locations of the accused.
3. She had paper documentation (receipts) with those times and dates (school shopping, remember?)
4. There was no police report that said HER child was the person of interest since the first name but not the last name were correct.
5. The police did not question anyone at the house about the incident.
6. It was strange they would try to get money out of her with NO proof that would stand up in court.
7. That she was gonna sue that woman right out of her damn house for stalking and bearing false witness (yeah, I know, but it is dramatic license...)
8. And most important, that her attorneys were gonna get WELL paid from digging into the insurance company's DEEP pockets for such fuckery. (And you know if the attorneys get well paid, you get paid even better!)

After all this and a few legal references that I can't remember, the lady on the phone said that they had some suspicions that things were not quite what the lady was saying. The matter would be dropped and they would discuss the possible pitfalls of accusing innocent people of property crimes with their customer. Let her know that they were the ones who would pay the most in such a case.