Ok, I admit that I did something really petty to get back at a neighbor. I had gotten along extremely well with this neighbor for years and then he started to get really weird such as yelling at random strangers walking past his house on the sidewalk to the point where one of my friends who lives across the street asked him what on earth was wrong with him.

I hold one annual BBQ every year - the neighbors are all invited (himself included) and have been doing this for years now. My parties never get out of control, there is nice food served and generally most people are gone by around 11 pm (on a Saturday night). I was walking one of my friends out to her car and saw a police car parked on front of my house. I walked right up and asked if there was a problem and they said, no, we did receive a noise complaint but we can’t hear a thing so obviously this is untrue. I invited them to come into the backyard so they could see for themselves and to have some food if they were hungry which they declined. I asked who had called and yes, it was the next door neighbor and I was furious.

I knew he had been sleeping in his basement bedroom rather than the upstairs bedroom as one time he complained to me when I had mistakenly forgotten to turn off my basement bathroom light which was right across from the basement room he slept in and it bothered him. So, the next day I went out and got the strongest light bulb I could find but waited until the following Friday night to install it as it was a long weekend and I would be going out of town. I turned that sucker on and happily went out of town for the weekend. When I returned I found he had trespassed on my property and put a kids swimming pool against my window to block the light (why he didn’t get blinds for his own window is beyond me) which I promptly moved. Yes, this was very passive aggressive behavior on my part and at that point I wrote a little note and put it in his mailbox. The next day we chatted, he apologized for calling the police on me and I apologized for the bright light bulb and all was well after. He had been a single guy the first few years but then met someone, got married and the kids starting coming. He admitted being stressed out by the kids and that he was taking his stress out on me and others (also why he was sleeping in the basement bedroom). He and his wife ended up moving later that year to a larger house to accommodate their growing family and hopefully the extra space has relieved his stress levels!