Crazy neighbors make for taboo subject

This is the column my wife, Jenny, does not want me to write. She told me I shouldn’t do so when I mentioned to her that I was thinking about doing it.
I don’t blame her, because it’s about people we’ve known and the things I will say about them are not so flattering. But I can’t help it. It’s a subject that’s been in my head since a dog nearly attacked me.
The subject is not dogs, nor is it people that own dogs, because I have nothing against either. Instead, the subject is crazy neighbors.
Several weeks ago a crazy neighbor told her dog to “get” me, causing the big animal to bark at me and genuinely scare me.
When I got upset, the neighbor was baffled and “sorry” that I “didn’t get the joke.”
The joke isn’t funny when you’re walking with your 3-year-old who doesn’t know that not all dogs are fun-loving puppies who like to be cuddled. He was ready to hug the barking dog, while I was quickly devising exit plans to get us away from a potentially dangerous situation.
Having just met the neighbor the day before I didn’t realize her sense of humor was telling her dog to “get” somebody walking with a young child. And judging by our conversation the previous day, one in which she told me all cops are out to get people in this town and social services will snatch your child away if you say the wrong thing in public, I figured she was crazy enough to actually want her dog to “get” me.
This is not the first time I’ve had a crazy neighbor. When I was single shortly after graduating from college and living in an unfamiliar city, another crazy neighbor once had the nerve to tell cops that were called to the apartment complex that I was responsible for a domestic issue there.
Two small problems about this story for the crazy neighbor, who was the real culprit, were that I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time and I was at work in another city when the incident occurred. Needless to say he was rightfully arrested when the cops completed their investigation.
I grew up next to a crazy neighbor for a few years. This neighbor babysat my sister and me on occasion and would always tell us she wished somebody would make a bicycle with a banana seat that was perpendicular to the bicycle and not parallel to it. She wanted one because she was wide, which doesn’t make her crazy, but she always talked about it, probably because my bicycle had a banana seat. Even at a young age I realized that she was a little too obsessed with the topic.
Not all my neighbors have been crazy. In high school we lived next to a friendly middle-aged couple who allowed me to fish the Fox River from the docks on their property in Berlin. Some of my best memories from those years were when friends of mine would come over and we would spend all night fishing for catfish.
In junior high we lived next to a 95-year-old woman who still used a cooking stove heated with wood. She was sharper than most people I knew and shared many stories about days of old. The only thing semi-crazy about her was her name – Olga.
Although I don’t necessarily want crazy neighbors, especially ones that tell their dog to “get” me, they do make for interesting conversations. Anytime Jenny and I want to share a good laugh we talk about some of these neighbors.
Although they make for a good life, Jenny is afraid that one of these people will read this column and be upset by my remarks.
I disagree. They’re crazy, so they’ll probably be flattered that they kind of made the newspaper. If not, then they’ll set their dogs on me, call the cops and make me ride on a bicycle with a perpendicular banana seat.
Or maybe they’ll just think I’m the crazy neighbor who babbles in the paper like a little 3-year-old.