For those of you who don’t remember my dealings with my former neighbor and his dog I will only say this: if you ever find your sixty-year-old drunk neighbor in your backyard at three in the morning in his underwear and shoes going through your recycling it is time for you to move. Quickly. I though that I had put that memory behind me as well as the memories of how he treated his dog, but obviously some memories are meant to stay with us to remind us of where we don’t want to end up again. I was so happy on the day that I moved because I felt like I was beginning a new chapter in my life and ending the one with the drunk Macedonian, but I had no idea that this new chapter would come with the woman I now call English School Marm. I had been settled in my beautiful new apartment for approximately six weeks when she made her debut. (Isn’t that always the case? It’s just when you’re comfortable with going back in the water that JAWS attacks.) She decided that the best time for her close up was at the ungodly hour of nine o’clock on a Sunday morning and she did it by ringing my doorbell not once, but three times in a row. Now anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person, friends and family know that to ring my bell before noon means to invite certain death, so I was all ready to blast whoever it was that had dared defy my law, but what I wasn’t prepared for was an army of one with an arsenal of her own standing on the other side of the door.

And there she stood. All five feet nothing of her. Hair in tight curlers. Eyebrows thickly drawn on with an eerie precision that gave her a look of confused madness. Wearing a mauve dressing gown that my grandmother would have worn back in 1970. As I looked down at her (literally) I was confused to say the least. I had no idea who this woman was or what she wanted so early on a Sunday, but I was about to find out.
"Hello…" I said, groggily. "Can I help you?"
She look me up and down with eyes that I can only liken to a hawk’s, crossed her arms and said, in a very clipped and proper English accent: "I don’t know what you’re doing up here but You. Are. Very. Loud."
"I’m sorry?"
"At eleven thirty on Friday evening you knocked one of your screens onto my balcony! And your cats must be trained not to be so loud! They keep me up at night. What are you going to do about it?" She asked as her already thin lips almost disappeared.
I thought about replying that teaching a herd of buffalo to two step would be easier than getting my seventeen pound cat to tread lightly, but I didn’t think that she would find it as funny as I did. "I’m not sure I understand you. I think you must have the wrong apartment." I tried to smile to ease the tension but she walked right past me and into my apartment. Yes you heard right, she walked into my apartment. "Excuse me…" I replied, a little shocked at her audacity.
She stood in my living room and surveyed it with her beady little eyes, her mouth set in a firm line like she was disappointed to find that I wasn’t some junkie living in squalor. "This is…this is very nice. But you are missing a screen so you’d better come and get it."
As we were going down in the elevator to her apartment she mentioned that she had seen men coming in and out of my apartment and that ‘that sort of behavior isn’t very becoming.’ It was at this point that I understood that not only was this woman a modern day knock off of Mrs. Oleson from ‘Little House On The Prairie’, but she was also delusional because the only man who comes in and out of my apartment is the seventeen pound one whose heavy footedness was causing her so much anguish.
"Excuse me, but whoever comes in or out of my apartment can hardly be of any interest to you, but seeing as how you’re concerned about it, the one man that you saw is a friend of my mother’s who was helping me paint." I replied indignantly as we stepped out of the elevator and into her apartment.

It has to be said at this point that a person’s home really and truly does represent their personality because English School Marm’s home was completely white, her furniture was covered in cellophane plastic wrap and every inch of table space was covered with doilies. Yes, doilies. All of a sudden it became very clear to me that this hunched up little woman had nothing better to do with her time than criticize and pick on others and that, for whatever reason, she had chosen me as her target. As she closed the door in my face she left me with a look that clearly read ‘I’ll be watching you.’ And as I returned to my warm, sun-hued home with visions of giant doilies prancing before my eyes only one thought was going through my head: Shit. Here we go again.

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