When I politely asked my neighbour not to sunbathe in a bikini in front of my teenager’s window, she retaliated by installing a dirty toilet on my lawn with a sign that read, ‘WASH YOUR MIND HERE!’
I was angry, but Karma brought the perfect revenge.
I should have known the trouble would start when Shannon moved next door and immediately painted her house purple, then orange, then blue.
But I’m a big fan of the principle of ‘Live and let others live.’
That was until she started sunbathing in a bikini right in front of my 15-year-old son’s window.
‘Mum!’ – my son Jake ran into the kitchen one morning, his face redder than the tomatoes I’d sliced for lunch.
‘Can you…um…do something about that? In front of my window?’
I went to his room and looked out the window.
There was Shannon lying there, stretched out on a leopard chaise lounge, wearing the tiniest of bikinis that could be loosely described as sequin floss.
‘Just keep the blinds closed, darling,’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant, though my head was spinning.
‘But I can’t even open them to let fresh air in!’ – Jake collapsed on the bed.
‘It’s so weird. Tommy came to study yesterday, and he came into my room and just froze.
Like, with his mouth open, eyes rolling, total system failure.
His mum probably won’t let him in my room again!’
I sighed and closed the blinds. ‘Did she sunbathe like that every day?’
‘Every. One. A day. Mum, I’m dying. I can’t live like this.
I’m going to become a mole man and move into the basement. Do we have wifi down there?’
After a week of practically watching my teenage Jake parkour around his room to avoid seeing our exhibitionist neighbour, I decided to talk to Shannon.
Normally I stay out of what people do in their gardens, but Shannon’s idea of ‘sunbathing’ was more of a public show.
She was messing around in the thinnest of bikinis, sometimes even topless, and it was impossible not to notice her as we stood next to Jake’s window.
‘Hey, Shannon,’ I called out, trying to hit the sweet spot between “friendly neighbour” and “caring mother” in my voice. ‘Got a minute?’
She lowered her oversized sunglasses that made her look like an ornery praying mantis.
‘Renee! Are you going to borrow some suntan oil? I just bought some awesome coconut oil.
It makes you smell like after a tropical holiday and bad life decisions.’
‘Actually, I wanted to talk about your tanning spot.
See, it’s right in front of my son Jake’s window, he’s fifteen, and…’
‘О. My. God.’ – Shannon sat up, her face contorted in an eerily wide grin.
‘Are you seriously going to tell me where I can get my vitamin D?
In my own garden?’
‘That’s not what I-’
‘Listen, honey,’ she interrupted me, examining her neon pink nails as if they contained the secrets of the universe.
‘If it’s hard for your kid to see a confident woman living her best life, you should probably invest in better blinds.
Or in therapy. Or both.
I know a great life counsellor who can help him overcome his overwhelm.
She specialises in aura cleansing and interpretive dance.’
‘Shannon, please.
I’m just asking if you could put your chair somewhere else in your garden.
You have two acres!’
‘Hmm.’ She tapped her chin thoughtfully, then grabbed her phone.
‘Let me check out my plan.
Oh, look at this! I’m totally stoked about not caring about your opinion, until… forever.’
I backed away, wondering if I was in some episode of Neighbours Gone Crazy.
But Shannon wasn’t done with me yet. She sure wasn’t.
Two days later, I opened my door to pick up my paper and froze in place.
There, standing proudly in the middle of my perfectly manicured lawn was a toilet.
Not just any toilet. It was an old, dirty, tetanus-inducing throne, with a handwritten sign that read, ‘SPEND YOUR MIND HERE!’
I knew immediately that this was Shannon’s work.
‘What do you think of my art installation?’ – her voice came from her garden to me.
She was sitting on her deckchair, looking like a very smug, very underdressed cat.
‘I call it ‘Modern Suburban Controversy’.
The local art gallery wants to show it in their ‘Found Objects’ exhibition already!’ – she laughed.
‘Are you kidding me?’ – I pointed at the porcelan monstrosity. ‘That’s vandalism!’
‘No, honey, it’s self-expression. So is my tanning.
But since you’re so interested in having an opinion on what people do on their property, I thought I’d give you an appropriate place to put it.’
I stood on my lawn, looking at Shannon, who was laughing like a hyena, and something inside me just clicked.
You know that moment when you realise you’re playing chess with a pigeon?
The bird will just knock over all the pieces, strut around like it’s won, and leave droppings everywhere. That was Shannon.
I crossed my arms and sighed.
Sometimes the best revenge is to just sit back and watch karma do its work.
The weeks that followed tested my patience.
Shannon turned her garden into what I can only describe as a one-woman Woodstock.
The sunbathing continued, now with an added commentary.
She invited friends over, and her parties made the windows three houses down from us shake, complete with karaoke versions of ‘I Will Survive’ at 3am.
She even started a ‘meditation drum circle’ which was more like a herd of caffeinated elephants trying to learn the Riverdance.
Despite everything, I smiled and waved.
After all, that’s the thing with people like Shannon – they’re so busy writing their own dramedy that they never get to see the plot twist.
And what a twist it was.
It was a nice Saturday afternoon.
I was baking biscuits when I heard the sirens.
I stepped out onto my veranda just in time to see a fire truck screeching by my house.
‘Ma’am,’ the fireman approached me, looking puzzled.
‘Did we get a report of a sewage leak?’
Before I could answer, Shannon appeared with a concerned citizen’s face that deserved an Oscar.
‘Yes, Officer, the toilet in there…it’s a health hazard! I’ve seen…horrible things…it’s leaking in there!
Kids, would anyone think of the kids?’
The fireman looked at the dried, decorated toilet model, then at Shannon, then back at the toilet.
His facial expression was one that clearly showed he was questioning every decision that had brought him to this point.
‘Ma’am, false emergency calls are a crime.
It’s clearly garden decor,’ he paused, probably wondering why he had to say such a phrase at his job.
‘Dry garden decor. And I’m a firefighter, not a health inspector.’
Shannon’s face faded faster than her tan rating.
‘But aesthetic pollution! Visual pollution!’
‘Ma’am, we don’t respond to aesthetic emergencies, and mischief is definitely not something we respond to.’
The firefighters left the station after that, but karma had not yet unravelled with Shannon.
Far from done.
The fire truck drama barely slowed her down.
Rather, it inspired her to reach new heights. Literally.
One hot day, I saw Shannon dragging her leopard print chair up the stairs to the roof of her garage.
And there she was, high up like some kind of sun monster, armed with a reflective sunscreen towel and, something resembling, a huge glass of margaritas.
I was in the kitchen, engulfed in mountains of dishes, wondering if the universe wanted to test my blood pressure, when chaos broke out outside.
I heard a splash of water and a squeal that sounded like a cat in a washing machine.
I ran outside to find Shannon, face down in the mud, covered from head to toe in mud, wearing her favourite petunias.
It turned out that her new rooftop sunbathing spot had found its master – her faulty sprinkler system.
Our neighbour, Mrs Peterson, dropped her garden shears.
‘Oh my God, Shannon, are you trying to repeat Baywatch?
Because I think you missed the part on the beach.
And the running part. And…well, anyway…all the parts.’
Shannon stood up, covered in mud.
Her designer swimming costume was now covered in grass stains and something that looked like a very surprised earthworm.
After this incident, Shannon became quieter than a mouse in church.
She stopped sunbathing in front of Jack’s window, and the dirty toilet on my lawn disappeared faster than a trick.
Shannon invested in a fence for her garden, and our long suburban nightmare came to an end.
‘Mum,’ Jack said the next morning at breakfast, carefully lifting his blinds, ’can we get out of witness protection now?’
I smiled and set a plate of pancakes in front of him.
‘Yes, dear. I think the show is cancelled. Forever.’
‘Thank goodness,’ he muttered and smiled. – ‘I kind of miss the toilet, though.
I was strangely starting to like him. Like a really ugly garden gnome.’
‘Don’t joke about that.
Eat your pancakes before she decides to install an entire bathroom!’ – I said and laughed with my son as we looked at the wall around Shannon’s garden.
