Grumpy Old Men

I am not picking on old men, in general. I've known many wonderful senior gentlemen who are deserving of kudos for their old-fashioned etiquette and polish. Then there's my neighbor. I'm a fairly reticent neighbor - I far prefer to be left to my own devices. I have no loud parties, I have no children, I don't have domestic disputes with a significant other, and my dogs bark only once before they are ushered back into the house. I don't have extensive house repairs or renovations done starting at 7 am on Saturday and Sunday mornings and I don't have a motorcyle. Nor do I crane my neck out of doors, windows or over fences to see what the other folk are up to.

So I find it infuriating that I am forced to submit to all of those annoying events from other people, but in particular one neighbor who is a man of senior age. He answers the door in his tighty-whites (eww is the word that sums that experience up). He paws through everyone's garbage and carries home his treasures, which he piles up in a sort of Depression-era lean-to (against my fence, and on my property). He rummages through these heaps while muttering and cursing to himself loudly (that I can hear through my bedroom windows). He curses frequently, as a matter of fact, about anything and everything and sometimes - it seems to me - about nothing at all. His door slams numerous times morning, noon and night. His bright side light shines into my windows, giving me cause to comment that we could land a helicopter in the back yard with the brilliance.

But even more disturbing is his anger and contentiousness. I heard him exclaim loudly to another male neighbor (someone who has thankfully gone back to prison or to another state to escape the tax collector) that "the only good woman is a dead woman". Now that is downright scary. But just a few weeks ago when I politely made a request, he bellowed at me, "You're a f__cking pig! A f__cking bitch!".

Now, really. I've never spoken more than a few words to the old fart.

Whatever happened to courtesy, good neighbors and sanity? I ask you!