Have you ever lived next door to an irate and irritating neighbor who just makes your blood curdle?   All the neighbor wants to do is complain about the other neighbor next door or down the road.  Your standing in the driveway with your briefcase.  The thermometer outside is a blistering 108 degrees.  You have beads of sweat rolling down your face.  You loosen your tie to a point of pulling it off madly and your ready to wrap it around your neighbor’s neck.  However, you restrain your emotions.  This isn’t the first time you’re approached with problems.  You imagine your neighbor hanging from the tree in her yard.  The front page in the newspaper reads:  ”A 200 pound, 4 foot-one neighbor strangled by a man’s tie.  Bizarre!  Completely bizarre.  Never seen anything like this.  All the neighbors say she was well liked.  There are no suspects.”  You shake the thought out of your head and blame it on the heat.  She rattles on and on.  Finally, at 8:57 p.m. she finishes and walks away happy that she was able to vent her concerns to you.  You run into the house and lock the door behind you and draw the shades shut and turn off the phone.

Some people intentionally would love to sever their relationships to their complaining neighbors.  Usually their motive stems from feelings of outrage over being denied peace and quiet after a hard days work, coupled with a burning desire to seek revenge.  Exploding gives them more satisfaction than forgetting about the slight and protecting their reputation and image.  They don’t care about the long-term benefits of their reputation, only about the short-term satisfaction of hurting someone else.

Several years ago, someone I know who had lived next door to a neighbor, in his seventies,  who would wake up at 5:00 on Sunday morning and begin mowing his lawn. 

Well, the neighbor’s in this community were outraged!  I was told that they held meetings and begin plotting ways to manipulate his lawn mower or just plain walk over and tell the guy to “cut-it-out!”  They were coming up with some creative ways to seek revenge.  My friend invited me over to one of the meetings to listen to their conversation.  What I heard had surprised me.  My friend knew that I would be in a “I don’t believe I’m hearing this” type of reaction.  Since I didn’t live in the neighborhood, and I was there as a listener, I had an idea that sounded great in my mind.  Instead, I relayed my idea to my friend, who was the neighbor, to present it to the group.  At first it didn’t  score any “kudos,”  however, after some careful consideration for the next five days, they figured what hurt could it do to tell the idea to the neighbor.