Sometimes, our relationship with our neighbors may be just epic. There’re people who dislike literally everything, and they may add a grain of salt to our lives by their permanent claims. Such thing happened to our today’s heroine, who wrote a letter to our editorial to tell us about an absurd claim from her neighbor. The woman, however, never lost her temper and provided her neighbor with an epic feedback that she will probably not be able to forget.
A woman wrote to us to tell her, nearly dramatic, story.
A young woman, 20, has written a letter to our editorial. She told us about an incident that happened to her recently, and she revealed how she handled it, in a very unusual way. The woman began her story, saying, that she lives in a college dorm and their accommodation is arranged in a way that they have all-female floors.
The woman revealed that, by some reason, she has always been quarreling with her neighbors, who are her fellow groupmates. They live next door to her, and they have always been complaining about everything and anything.
She wrote, «Sometimes, it really looked like these 4 ladies hated me, for nothing. I barely talked to them, and we hadn’t had anything in common with them. I can’t remember doing anything wrong to them, but they would still always tease me and complain about me to our principals. I tried to remain calm, always ignoring their remarks and complaints, until one day.»
The woman faced the most absurd claim in her life from her dorm neighbors.
The young lady goes on with her story, saying, that in that group of people, who were permanently dissatisfied with her only existence, there was an «informal leader», a girl named Donna. She has been very nasty since their first meeting in the dorm, and she had always been the source of never-ending complaints about our heroine.
The woman wrote, «Donna has a boyfriend, who doesn’t attend our college, and, despite the strict rules for visitors, they breach all of them, and he comes to her room regularly. I knew about that, and I was never complaining about this, because I didn’t want to be like these people. But Donna was purposefully provoking me for some reactions.»
«She was spreading the rumors that I was a light-minded person and that I was trying to seduce her boyfriend, which wasn’t true at all, I just didn’t care about him and I even didn’t pay attention on what he actually looked like. If someone asked me to point at him in a crowd, I’d never do that, because I wouldn’t even recognize him. All these rumors were just rumors, and Donna was trying to make a stir, obviously, and to grab some of other people’s attention.»
Donna paid an immense attention even to our heroine’s outfits.
The woman wrote, «One day, I left my room and went down the hall to the water fountain. I refilled my water bottle, and returned back to my room. At that moment, I was wearing a red tank top and no bra. My top was fitted, but it wasn’t see through. There was a group of people hanging out in the hall, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention. An hour later, I got a violent knock on the door and there was Donna, and she was shouting at me from the beginning.»
The woman goes on, saying, «Donna was totally furious, and she shouted that if I go out into the hall again I must put a bra on. She said that her boyfriend was out there, and he was staring at me.»
The woman admitted that she has always been super non-confrontational, but this time she was fuming. She didn’t show her emotions at that moment, but she already knew what to do next.
The woman’s petty revenge came instantly.
The fed up woman wanted to compromise at first. She wrote, «I saw no problem in wearing a bra, but then I just thought that this unfair attitude would go on and on, until I react to it somehow. Next time they would complain about anything else, not less absurd than this time. I wasn’t just ready for this, I wanted to live a normal life from then on. So, I did what Donna wanted me to do, but in my own way.»
The woman revealed, «As soon as Donna asked me to wear a bra, I did this next time I left my room. But I was wearing jeans and my sports bra, and nothing else. So, technically, I did what she wanted me to do, I wore a bra.»
«Her eyes were very wide when she saw me going to the bathroom like this. But she didn’t say anything anymore. She was obviously shocked and couldn’t provide any arguments against my actions. The floor was all-female, no men were ever allowed there, and if she was the person who breached the rules, she was the one who would handle the consequences then.»
And here’re the stories of 15 people, whose revenge to their offenders was so smart, that it deserved to be called an art.
Preview photo credit bruce mars / Unsplash
Neighbor Discovers Elderly Woman Has Been Living in Her Car for Years — A Story of the Day
A man is horrified to discover that his frail elderly neighbor has been living in her broken-down old car even though she has a house.
Sometimes it takes us a long long time to realize that something is wrong, very wrong, and has been for a long time. David Castle was used to seeing his neighbor Olivia Madison arrive and leave in her car at the same time as he did.
At least that’s what he thought, until the night he came home at 2:30 am and saw Mrs. Madison in her car — apparently fast asleep. Had she locked herself out? David wondered. And then he realized that he had never actually seen Mrs. Madison drive her car, not once.
Worried, David approached the beat-up old Ford and peered inside. Mrs. Madison was reclining in the front seat on the passenger side, covered by a thick comforter, fast asleep.
In the back seat were several boxes of groceries and basic necessities neatly organized. It was obvious: Mrs. Madison, seventy-nine years old, was living in her car!
But why, wondered David aghast. She owned the house next to his, a pretty Victorian two-story, which had started to look sadly neglected after Mr. Madison’s death three years before.
David went home and woke up his wife. “Lydia,” he said, “I think Mrs. Madison has been living in her car. Honey, please fix up the guest bedroom. I’m going to bring her in.”
Lydia jumped out of bed. “Oh my God, David! Mrs. Madison?” she gasped. “But she must be ninety if she’s a day!”
“I know,” said David grimly. “I never thought I’d see someone I know living on the street. I’m going to go get her.”
“Don’t scare her, David,” begged Lydia.
“Don’t worry, I won’t, but it’s freezing tonight,” David said. “And she’s not sleeping in that car one more night!”
Many of us pass through this world without really seeing what surrounds us.
David walked back outside and approached Mrs. Madison’s car again. He knocked gently on the window until Mrs. Madison’s eyelids fluttered. “Mrs. Madison,” he called softly. “It’s David Castle from next door!”
Mrs. Madison woke up and she looked a little frightened, but David’s kindly smile reassured her. “Mrs. Madison. Please come out of the car and come inside. My wife has a nice cup of hot chocolate for you and a warm bed.”
“David,” Mrs. Madison said, “I’m quite alright…Please don’t worry.”
“I’m not leaving unless you come with me,” David said firmly, and finally Mrs. Madison opened the door and got out of the car. David wrapped her in her comforter and led her up the path to his door.
Inside, Lydia waited with the promised cup of hot chocolate. Mrs. Madison took the first sip and tears filled her eyes. “I used to make hot chocolate just like this for my Charley when he was working night shifts…” she said.
“Mrs. Madison, why were you sleeping in your car?” asked Lydia gently.
Mrs. Madison closed her eyes. “I can’t go home, you see…Not since Charley…”
“You haven’t been home since your husband passed away?” asked David shocked.
Mrs. Madison was weeping silently. “I did at first,” she explained, “But then…There was this terrible silence where he used to be, and then suddenly I’d open a drawer or a door and I’d smell him like he’d just been there.
“I couldn’t live with his absence or with the constant reminders, David, I couldn’t live with that pain. So one night I just took my comforter and came out to the car. That was the first peaceful night for me since Charley had passed.
“So I started sleeping out here, but soon I couldn’t stand going into the house for anything. I had the water and lights switched off, and began living in my car. It’s been two years now. You are the first person who noticed.”
“But how do you manage, for bathroom facilities, I mean?” asked Lydia curiously.
“I have been a member of a senior citizen gym group for ten years, I used to go with Charley,” said Mrs. Madison. “So I go there, have my bath and whatnot…I manage.”
“Mrs. Madison,” said David gently. “Why don’t you sell the house and move somewhere else?”
Mrs. Madison blushed. “Oh David, I’ve thought about that, but the house is such a mess!”
“Well, you go to bed now, and tomorrow I’ll go look it over, OK?” David said kindly. “And if you allow me to, I’ll have the house cleaned up and you can sell it.”
Mrs. Madison gave David and Lydia a grateful hug. “Thank you, my dears. You’ve given me hope.”
The next day, David called a friend of his who had a small business restoring old homes and asked him to visit Mrs. Madison’s house with him. When the two men walked into the house, they were shocked.
The whole house was covered with layers of dust, and thick veils of spider webs hung from the ceilings and the light fixtures, but worse of all, the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with a strange-looking black slime.
“Out!” cried David’s friend, and pushed him out of the door. He went to his car and brought back two face masks and a series of glass tubes. The two men went back in, and David watched as his friend collected samples of the substance he said was mold.
David’s friend was shaking his head. “Buddy,” he said, “this could be bad. I’m taking this to the lab to see what they say. but it may be bad news.”
“Come on,” said David. “I can call in a cleaning service… Just a little mold and dust isn’t the end of the world.”
But David’s friend shook his head. “If this is what I think it is, there’s no way that this house will ever be clean — or safe to live in.”
“Safe?” asked David. “What do you mean?”
“If that is toxic mold, it will have seeped into every crevice of that house, under every floorboard, inside every wall. In fact, if your old lady friend had been living in the house, she’d be seriously ill by now!”
Three days later, the news came back from the lab. It was a variation of the very dangerous Stachybotrys mold which the technicians had never seen before. They reported it as an “extreme case,” and recommended all the spores be destroyed.
David told Mrs. Madison the bad news, and the two decided to call in the Fire Department and ask for their help in dealing with the problem. The Fire Department expert told them that the only way to make sure that the mold did not spread to other homes would be to burn the house. Dismantling the house would send clouds of the spore up into the air, and allow them to spread all over the neighborhood.
Sadly, Mrs. Madison accepted the Fire Department’s advice and watched as they set a carefully controlled fire. And as her old house burned, she wept. David placed a gentle arm around her and said, “You have a home with us, Mrs. Madison, for as long as you want, you know that!”
Mrs. Madison nodded. “I know David, thank you, but I was hoping to have my own little place again…”
David had an idea, but he kept it to himself. The next day he called a meeting of all the closest neighbors. “As you all know, Mrs. Madison burned down her house to prevent the spread of a toxic mold that could harm us all.
“I think we should all pitch in to try and solve her problem. Does anyone have any ideas?”
One of the women raised her hand. “I’m a real estate agent, and Mrs. Madison’s plot is big, much bigger than any of our plots. I think I know a developer who might be interested!”
As it turned out, the developer was very interested, and David negotiated an excellent deal on behalf of Mrs. Madison. The developer was building a series of assisted living cottages, and as part of the generous pay-off, Mrs. Madison got to live in one of the best units for life.
Thanks to David’s kindness, Mrs. Madison received a good price for her plot, and a little independent home all of her own, and she stayed in the neighborhood she loved next door to her best friends, David and Lydia Castle.
What can we learn from this story?
Many of us pass through this world without really seeing what surrounds us, and so we miss the opportunity to help those in need. David had been seeing Mrs. Madison living in her car, but because he didn’t pay attention he didn’t realize it.
From the worse misery, a great blessing may flow. Because she was living in her car, Mrs. Madison wasn’t affected by the potentially deadly toxic mold.
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