Neighborhood Exile

Dad has been digging himself deeper and deeper into trouble with his neighbors. He's frustrated trying to make new friendships with the people that live on his street and I can tell he's getting more angry about it as time passes. It's bad enough Dad acts so weird. Even if he was a super cool guy to hang out with frequently, Mom's condition makes it a little tough to have dinner guests over. I can understand why many people would want to tactfully excuse themselves from Dad's dinner invitations, etc. Can't fault them for that.

Crazed for golf balls, Dad has been sneaking around his neighbor's houses late at night with a flashlight. Apparently he's been hunting in their back yards and snooping around their property with little regard for their privacy. He has no problem walking right up to their windows while waving his flashlight along the ground. That's a bad idea, a bad choice of an evening hobby. At a minimum it could get your ass kicked plus involve the local police. At a maximum it could result in Dad staring down the business end of a gun.

There's an elderly married couple living right next door to my parents. Recently Dad was engaged in his covert late night golf ball retrieval operations when his neighbor's wife spotted someone wandering around on their property with a flashlight. She was brave, she rushed to open a door and stepped outside to confront the unknown intruder. When she began yelling at Dad to get the hell out of their yard and threatened to call the police my father decided it would be cool to yell expletives and insults back at her. I guess they verbally brawled for a few minutes before Dad finally got it into his noggin that it might be best if he went away. Now the neighbors know what he's up to at night and word has spread rapidly on their street. If that police chief Dad was trying to start a fight with finds out about this stuff he's probably going to really fuck Dad up.

My father's version of this story is totally whacked. Believe me, I've heard it over and over more times than I care to count. In his twisted world, he was minding his own business late at night just outside his neighbor's windows on their property looking for stuff that didn't belong to them. That makes perfect sense. How dare they call him names for that! How dare they demand he stays away from their house from now on! Those bastards! Dad doesn't seem to realize how completely fucked up and absurd his recounting of that evening's events sound as he's speaking about it.

Then there's this unhealthy obsession he's got for old clocks...