By Jack Godbey

Columnist

I’m a pretty good neighbor. I’m friendly enough to give a casual wave while mowing the lawn simultaneously but private enough to wait until they are done taking their trash to the curb before I go out, so we don’t feel obligated to speak to each other.

I must admit that it’s been a strained relationship with my neighbor ever since the great nude sunbathing incident of 2023. I walked out my back door expecting to enjoy some alone time outside. However, my neighbor’s wife obviously wasn’t expecting me, and when I walked out, she lay in her backyard, naked as a jaybird sunbathing. I instantly realized what was happening and tried to move my feet so fast to return to the house that I lost my house slipper. I believe that I would have made it back in the house unseen, except for the fact that I stepped on an acorn and hollered out. It was then that my nude neighbor’s eyes and mine met. What do you say in that situation? I decided that there was nothing I could say that would make me feel less awkward, so I just nodded and went back in the house. I’ve been avoiding her like the plague ever since.

The next weekend, I found an old baby monitor in my attic and decided that it would be perfect to put in the basement to keep tabs on my dog while I was at work. So, I got the monitor hooked up, and it still worked great. Suddenly, the monitor began picking up my neighbor’s baby monitor, and I heard the wife, whom I had just seen nude, say to her husband something about a creeping Charlie. I thought, great, she thinks my name is Charlie.  I heard the wife say, “Maybe I should just take the Charlie and bury it in the backyard.” My heart sank. It was a complete accident that I walked out to see her nude. Now, they are talking about killing me.

I decided that despite my insistence to never face them again, it was time to settle this matter before they killed me. I saw the husband outside working in the yard and I pretended to be walking to the mailbox and struck up a conversation. I admitted to him that I knew all about killing the creeping Charlie and pleaded with him to find another solution without resorting to violence. He looked at me like I was an escaped mental patient. I had, after all, just admitted to eavesdropping on them. Come to find out; Creeping Charlie was the name of a flower that they had trouble growing inside the house. I felt foolish, and if you thought the situation was awkward before, now it bordered on full-blown embarrassment. Obviously, I was the new neighborhood weirdo, but I decided that I could live with that and accepted things as they were.

Fast forward to last weekend. It was one o’clock in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep, so I walked into my backyard to get some fresh air and to look at the night sky. I realized that I had to go to the bathroom. Despite having multiple bathrooms inside the house, I decided to go back to my country roots and just whipped out the goods and urinated right there under the stars. As I was finishing up, I somehow triggered my neighbor’s motion light, and there sat my neighbor’s wife, watching me with all the private stuff hanging out and not so private. I realized there was nothing to say, and once again, I just nodded and went back into the house. At least now, we are even.