When I kindly asked my neighbor to stop sunbathing in bikinis in front of my teenage son’s window, she returned by planting a filthy toilet on my lawn with a sign: “FLUSH YOUR OPINION HERE!” I was livid, but karma delivered the perfect plan.
When Shannon moved in next door and immediately painted her house purple, then orange, and then blue, I should’ve known trouble was brewing. But I’m a devotee in living and letting live. But, one month ago, she started hosting bikini sunbathing spectacles right outside my 15-year-old son’s window.
“Mom!” my son Jake is crying in the kitchen one morning, his face redder than the tomatoes I was slicing for lunch. “Can you… um… do something about that? Outside my window?”
I go to his room and peered out the window. She was Shannon, sprawled out on a leopard-print lounger, wearing the tiniest bikinis that could generously be called dental floss with sequins.
“Just keep your blinds closed, honey,” I said.
“But I can’t even open them to get fresh air anymore!” Jake slumped against the bed.
I sighed, closing the blinds. “Has she been out there like that every day?”
“Every. Single. Day. Mom, I’m dy:ing. I can’t live like this. I’m going to have to become a mole person and live in the basement. Do we have Wi-Fi down there?”
I decided to have a friendly chat with Shannon after a week of watching my teenage son practically parkour around his room to avoid glimpsing our exhibitionist neighbor,
“Hey, Shannon,” I called out, aiming for that sweet spot between ‘friendly neighbor’ and ‘concerned parent’ tone of voice. “Got a minute?”
“Renee! Come to borrow some tanning oil? I just got this amazing coconut one. Makes you smell like a tropical vacation and poor life choices.”
“Actually, I wanted to talk about your sunbathing spot. See, it’s right in front of my son Jake’s window, and he’s 15, and—”
“Oh. My. God.”
“Are you seriously trying to police where I can get my vitamin D? In my own yard?”
“Listen, sweetie,”
“Shannon, please. I’m just asking if you could maybe move your chair literally anywhere else in your yard. You have two acres!”
“Hmm.”
“Let me check my schedule. Oh, look at that! I’m booked solid with not caring about your opinion until… forever.”
After two days, I opened my front door to grab the newspaper and stopped de:ad in my tracks.
There, proudly displayed in the middle of my perfectly manicured lawn, was a toilet bowl. It was an old, filthy, tetanus-inducing throne, complete with a handwritten sign that read: “FLUSH YOUR OPINION HERE!”
I knew it was Shannon’s craftwork
“What do you think of my art installation?” her voice floated over from her yard.
“I call it ‘Modern Suburban Discourse.’ The local art gallery already wants to feature it in their ‘Found Objects’ exhibition!” she laughed.
“Are you kidding me?”
“This is vandalism!”
“No, honey, this is self-expression. Like my sunbathing. But since you gave opinions about what people do on their property, I thought I’d give you a proper place to put them.”
And oh boy, what a twist it was.
It was a pleasant Saturday. I was baking cookies when I heard sirens. I stepped onto my porch just in time to see a fire truck screech to a halt in front of my house.
“Ma’am,”
“We received a report about a sewage leak?”
Shannon appeared, wearing a concerned citizen face that deserved an Oscar before I could respond.
“Yes, officer! That toilet over there… it’s a health hazard! I’ve seen things… terrible things… leaking! The children, won’t someone think of the children?”
With that, the firefighters left the property, but karma wasn’t finished with Shannon. Not by a long shot.
The fire truck drama barely slowed her down. If anything, it motivated her to reach new heights.
Our neighbor, Mrs. Peterson, dropped her gardening shears. “Good Lord! Shannon, are you trying to recreate Baywatch? Because I think you missed the beach part. And the running part. And the… well… every part.”
Shannon came up, caked in mud. Her designer bikini was now decorated with grass stains and what appeared to be a very surprised earthworm.
Following the incident, Shannon was as quiet as a church mouse. She stopped sunbathing in front of Jake’s window, and the dirty toilet bowl on my lawn disappeared faster than a magician’s rabbit.
Shannon bought a privacy fence around her backyard, and our long suburban nightmare ended.
