Sometimes I'm Not a
Very Good Neighbor
written by Dylan Brody
I live in a townhouse in Sylmar. I walk my dogs outside the complex where my neighbors have actual lawns.
The house next door to our complex recently changed owners. As I walked Lord Buckley Sweetlips, the Greatest of All Dane Mutts (The Dinosaur Slaying Dog) on the lawn, the new owner stepped out and said, “That’s my lawn.”
I don’t like the passive-aggressive guess-my-intent game. Also, I feel I have a right to let my dog poop on his lawn because I’ve been doing so much longer than he’s lived there. So I said, “This is my dog.”
The man repeated his assertion. “That’s MY lawn.”
I repeated my claim. “This is MY dog.”
The man said, “What is wrong with you?”
I considered telling him again that the dog was mine, but I was afraid he would start to think I was retarded, so I took a different tack (let me say, parenthetically, that “tack” is the right word. It’s an idiomatic sailing term that refers to adjusting the position of the sail and the course of the boat relative to the wind direction. If you’ve been saying, “Take a different tact,” people like me – and probably Andrew Lederer – have been judging you harshly). I said, “I don’t speak English.”
The man said, “You gotta be kidding me.”
I said, “No. Seriously. I don’t speak any English.” And then, “At all.”
He blinked slowly and said, “Don’t bullshit me. You’re speaking English – we’re talking English right now.”
I said, “I know it can be confusing. I’ve learned a few words phonetically and I’m told my accent is pretty good so it seems as though I’m conversant, fluent, even. But the fact of the matter is, I have no idea what either of has been saying during this whole interaction.”
While I said this, Lord Buckley Sweetlips hunched up like a small kangaroo and relieved himself on the man’s lawn. I bent down and collected the droppings in a plastic bag. I tied off the bag and extended it toward the man as I approached his front door. I said, “If you want this, I won’t have it bronzed.”
The man appeared appropriately baffled and gestured toward his trash cans.
I said, “I’ll just put it in the trash over there, then.”
As I shifted direction toward the little row of trash and recycling receptacles, he pointed an accusatory finger and shouted, “There! You see? I knew you spoke the language!”
I matched his tone and pointed back at him, shouting, “Water! Sharp bowling time flower hammock!”
I discarded the bag full of dog refuse and went home.
The following day, as I walked Sir Corwin the Beautiful Dog-faced Dog, Brindled Beast of Sylmar, the man emerged from his house to send me away but then recognized me from our previous interaction. He froze up, not certain whether he wanted to bother giving it a second try. While he hesitated, I grinned at him and waved as if we were old friends. Then I pointed at Sir Corwin and said, “That’s my dog!”
The man went inside quietly and shut the door.
Dylan Brody is a storyteller and novelist living in California.
Visit DylanBrody.com.