Day 531: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: filth
This story is based on the events and a relationship I have already concocted in a prior weekend freewrite: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@owasco/freewrite-weekend-freewrite-2-22-2019
"You dirty rotten filthy fink!"
It was the neighbor again. He hadn't enjoyed my little prank with the trumpets. I guess he didn't like having to go to court to fight the summons he got for trespassing on MY property. As if any property is mine. Or his. It's all one right?
My neighbor does not think so. He thinks that little line of neatly trimmed geometrically sophomoric boxwood between his yard and mine is the end-all-be-all of boundaries, never to cross, never to defile in any way.
I let my chickens free range. Now and then, and I mean rarely, one of them remembers she can fly and hops over the boxwoods. She does her job over in his yard of eating bugs, aerating the grass, and fertilizing when the need moves her.
But this day, he did not appreciate it. He may or may not have stepped in the fertilizer - he didn't say. But next thing I know, I hear a knock at my door.
"You dirty rotten filthy fink!"
I invited him in for a cup of fresh spring dead nettle tea.
this is my entry for @mariannewest freewrite challenge:
https://steempeak.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-531-5-minute-freewrite-thursday-prompt-filth
It's been a while since I've written a purely fictional freewrite. I had actually forgotten how they can take me so far away from my troubles. Freewrite as therapy! I'm the good guy in the story. Thank you so much for reading.
Ahh the disgruntled neighbor....there always seems to be one! I've had this type and currently Jeff has one who gets under his skin. His is the town counsel who is a rich and very unkind neighbor who fusses over tree limbs that bow over his yard.
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I have difficult neighbors, or maybe I'm the difficult one. We don't have it quite as bad as my story, but close. Trees are often material for disagreement here as well. My neighbor had been using a large part of my property because the previous owners of my house planted a hedgerow a good twenty feet short of the property line. But when a tree on the portion he'd been using for more than a decade died, he figured I should pay for it. Which I did, because unlike my characters, I don't like confrontation!
Thanks for stopping in!
Don't get me started on my neighbor... it could be worse. That's what I keep telling myself. In so many ways, it could be so much worse. She is neat and clean. She takes good care of her animals. But I've seen her kick a stray dog (it had a collar!). "I hate strays," she says. I'm going to stop here. It can take weeks if not years for the steam kettle in my mind to stop shrieking....
I feel that way about most of my neighbors, but one was the nightmare neighbor of my worst dreams. I'd take any stray in if it came to my door. What kind of person hates a stray? I love them instantly.
LOL! I'll bet he has no idea of the health benefits: I invited him in for a cup of fresh spring dead nettle tea. Just as he can't see the benefits of chickens or neighbors.
Truthfully, it's the only tea worthy weed I could think of under pressure! hahaha, yes it would have been very good for both of them. I'm trying to make both of them seem like loveable asses.
I thought of you when I wrote "geometrically sophomoric" BTW.
LOL!! It's a fantastic line. You knew I'd love it!! I did stop and wonder if it should be sophomorically geometric, but you know math better than I do. My favorite architect is Hundertwasser because he hated straight lines. :)
that little line of neatly trimmed geometrically sophomoric boxwood between his yard and mine
"sophomorically geometric" sounds disdainful of anything geometric to me, which this character would never think, but "geometrically sophomoric" means cut simply, as in unimaginative boxlike walls of green.
But I'm glad you loved it. I wrote it for you.
Ohhhh, I get it now -- you're right, I was thinking of the opposite meaning. And I'm honored that math would ever remind you of me. In first grade, Mrs. Hoffman routinely spanked me for saying "I don't get it" with the math problems. "Whaaat? Everyone else gets it! You were daydreaming again!" (Turns me over her lap, whack, whack, in front of the entire class.) I took every math and science class that school offered, oddly enough (K-12 housed in one 3-story building). I had to work so hard to achieve a C- in Algebra while the others easily earned an A. Then came... physics. OMG. Half a dozen students per class, and they all understood it and earned As, but I was getting a D-, so I dropped the class before it ruined my report card. And now math reminds someone of me.... oh the irony! My favorite childhood movie was Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land. I was so in awe of the logic and symmetry and exponential stuff. But I still can't solve for 2x + 5y = 25. Or something like that. Sorry this is so long. THANK YOU for the geomtric "Easter Egg"!
I love it when you go on and on! Never apologize for that.
I also loved physics because it was all math, until you get to quantum stuff. Then I was lost and felt so very stupid. I've heard it said since that it takes a lifetime to understand quantum physics, so now I don't feel quite as dumb.
History, social studies and literature had me flummoxed. What?! There is more than one answer? That was too much pressure for me.
When I was a math teacher, I would give extra credit on a test problem if a student knew they were wrong and indicated that with a question mark. The best mathematicians know when they do not understand. You were too good at math you see, better than that stupid teacher who had no business teaching math. I hate her.
Math is awesome, closest I have ever gotten to god, like our buddy Pythagoras.
And 2x + 5y = 25 has an infinite number of solutions, so it's good you can't "solve" it.
Math is awesome, closest I have ever gotten to god - I'm stealing that!! Ty Chrystie or Kristy, I don't know which one, will say it. :)
And 2x + 5y = 25 has an infinite number of solutions, so it's good you can't "solve" it. LOL!!! That is one consolation. :)
You're the kind of math teacher I wish I'd had!!
Fiction??!! I wish it was true. You had me laughing good. Damn neighborhood filthy fink haters! Lighten up I say to them.
well, I am very happy I gave you a chuckle then. thank you for your comment!
This reminds me so much of the ongoing feud between my sister and her neighbor! They are both stubborn and selfish, and I'm glad I live far, far away.
My neighbors and I might possibly feel the same way as these two, but we are well behaved. We just do not have anything to do with one another. And my chickens can't get over the six foot plastic fence they erected between our yards. Maybe it's true what they say about fences.
I think there is some truth to the old saying. Apparently, fences are not allowed where my sister lives, so they just make little rock borders or plant shrubbery and things like that. It was the variety of the shrubbery, and the specific placing thereof, that lead to the feud to which I referred.
Sounds like a battle I would not have chosen to fight. A bit silly!
What kind of regulation is that, no fences? Here there are very few houses without them.
Here comes the neighbour again. Haha.