The constant knock on the front door

Neighbors: everyone has them. Sometimes they're like the part of the family you tell your friends you don't have and sometimes they become more than your family could ever be.

My neighbors fall in the first category.

I have a few of them I would like to introduce you to because I'm all for sharing pain and suffering.

I'll start with the neighbors on the side of my backyard. I call them the Knockers. See, they have three children who just love playing sport, cricket being their favorite. And all that jazz about it being the "gentleman's" game? You haven't seen these kids play then. There is a constant yelling going on due to broken windows, dented car doors, miaowing cats fleeing for their lives no thanks to the dubious batting skills of these kids. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the ball constantly landing in my backyard. You can probably guess what follows next.

Knock on my front door.

"Ma'am, sorry to bother you, but my brother hit the ball in your backyard (AGAIN) so could you please just throw it back over?"

He can't merely climb over the wall because I live in a security complex and our fences have electric wiring. Another problem occurs when I can't find the ball, because by the time I get home in the afternoon, one of my dogs either buried it or chewed it to pieces. If there's no ball, I can't throw it back over.

Knock on the front door.

"Ma'am, sorry to bother you, but have you thrown the ball over yet cause we can't find it."

Instead of just speaking to me from their side of the wall, they always walk around the block to knock on the front door. Kids have so much energy.

Moving on to the Beggars. They are my neighbors looking out from my front door's side. Now before I moved into my house, I had a wall built around it for my dogs. That cost about an arm and half a leg. Then, one night as I was watching Criminal Minds, I heard a knock on the front door. The conversation went something like this:

Neighbor: "Hi, I'm Peter. We live across from you."

Me: "Hi, nice to meet you."
Even though I've been staying here for two months now, but hey, maybe you're a late riser. And thanks for asking my name, by the way.

Neighbor: "So, I see you put a wall up?"

Me:"Eh, yes."
He's a real bright one, this guy. So perceptive.

Neighbor: "The thing is: we want to put a wall up too and we want you to pay R8000, 00 because it's for the sake of your privacy as well."
R8000,00 is about $980.

Me: "You know what: I just paid at least twice that amount for my own wall and your house is across the street so I don't really see how that affects my privacy. But thanks for stopping by. Oh, and by the way, my name is Mariska. Good night."

Front door closing in his greedy face.

Damn upper-class bum.

The neighbors on my left hand side I like to call the Bucketlisters, for obvious reasons. Imagine one of your wildest parties where someone set fire to the tablecloth whilst doing a flaming sambuka shot and the pool being full of that red liquid that tells you when someone was too lazy to get out of the water to take a pee and a real life Fifty Cent music video with music pumping from every corner of the room? Now multiply that by three hundred and you have the Bucketlisters.

These are old people having the blasting time of their lives. Unfortunately they blast it at my bedroom window even on a weeknight because they're obviously on pension and can sleep the hangover off every day of the week. They are living the good life. Retired bastards.

My favorite is of course the neighbor right in front of my side door. I was tanning (topless) one day when one of my dogs started sniffing at the wall. When I turned my head to see what it was, I caught a glimpse of a boy with eyes the size of an owl on ecstasy trying to hide behind a bush on the other side of the wall whilst peeking to his hormone's delight. Turns out I wasn't the only one to catch the peeking pervert as I heard his grandmother scold him all the way to the bathroom to go "clean his pants from the stains of sin." Never mind Big Brother watching you; it's the sixteen-year-old's you need to watch.

(maybe not an owl, but close to the freaky-enough)

Needless to say the grandmother never really talked to or greeted me when I walked my dogs past her house until the day I heard a terrible, urging scream from her house. I rushed over and discovered her friend propped up against one of the couches with a kind of bluish ring around her mouth, eyes looking like Droopy's and the left side of her face starting to sag. First thing I thought was stroke so I phoned an ambulance and ordered my neighbor to get her friend some water as I tried to keep the old lady awake and talking. It's all I could remember from when Chris's dad had a stroke: that the person should not fall asleep and be kept as comfortable as possible.

We waited and waited and waited for the ambulance to come while the old lady was getting bluer and her face starting to look like a mediocre version of Scar Face, so I ran back to my house, got my car where we put the seat down all the way and took her to the hospital ourselves. The doctor in the ER said we probably saved her life bringing her in so quick cause, as it turns out, she did have a stroke. And the ambulance? Oh, they rocked up at nine o' clock that night. The whole street could hear my neighbor giving them a piece of her mind. I think they had to go to the bathroom afterwards as well to wash off their "guilt that should stick to them like semen-sin for taking so long to rescue and old lady." She's a real class act, my neighbor.

The next day I had a knock on my front door. It was my old lady-neighbor with a basket full of chocolate chip cookies and a big apology for being so rude to me when Tommy was so "naughty invading my privacy."

Neighbors: sometimes you should really just ignore the knock on the front door and sometimes they save you a trip to the store by bringing over snacks :)