Fear The Reaper

As a man sows, so shall he reap.

I find that to be very true, not only in my own life but in the lives of others I know. I'm a big believer in karma, in the idea that what we put out into the world comes back to us. It's a good way to keep life in balance.

But right now, between my downstairs neighbor and my husband and me, I'm not sure who is sowing and who is reaping.

Last year, I posted about some of the troubles we'd had with the guy. The crux of this sordid tale is that he would use any excuse to come knocking on our door to complain about noise. The washing machine was too loud, our walking was too loud, our typing was too loud. Once he even threatened to call the police because some friends of ours had called "hello" up the stairs when they walked into the building.

Things had improved a bit, although my husband still won't stop referring to the guy as "McCrochetypants." He'd zeroed in on a new neighbor to pick on (not about noise, but about how the new guy's cable installation had messed up the reception he was getting with his rabbit ears), and he'd mostly left us alone. Once he even said hello to me in a friendly, neighborly way. I thought that probably meant we were BFF now.

But then something happened. Something incredible. Something unbelieveable. Something impossible.

McCrochetypants knocked on our door with a valid complaint.

I came home from a meeting last night to find my husband gone and was a little concerned. He'd said earlier that he might take his motorcycle out for a ride, but he'd left a bunch of lights on and a thank-you note from our wedding half done on his desk. He's not that spontaneous, and he never leaves lights on, so I wondered where he'd gone in such a hurry.

About 10 minutes later, he came in, annoyed. He'd been downstairs, at the McCrochetypants residence, checking out a leaky pipe. I don't understand plumbing, but it has something to do with our bathroom and kitchen being connected to theirs, and there's a crack in their pipe, so a tiny bit of whatever drains from our shower and kitchen sink comes out into their place. After checking it out, he had agreed that until the problem could be fixed, we would use the shower in our hall bathroom, because it's not connected to the faulty pipe.

But this morning when I went into the hall bathroom, I found the shower knob broken. It was spinning loosely; it couldn't be pulled or pushed, and when my husband took it apart, he realized a few pieces had broken off. We tried to replace the knob with the one from the other bathroom, but it didn't fit. Rather than trying to force it and risking having two broken showers, we reattached the knob in its original place, shrugged and decided that McCrochetypants would just have to deal with a little water this morning.

As soon as I turned on the water, I heard the knocking of McCrochetypants banging on his bathroom pipes. Ten minutes later, as I shampooed my hair, I heard banging in our hall bathroom, and the water suddenly turned scalding hot. I jumped out of the shower, adjusted the temperature and got back in. As I was rinsing my hair, the water turned ice cold. Again, I jumped out of the shower, and annoyed that my husband had been messing with the water while I'd been showering, I stepped out of the bathroom, where he was waiting to push me right back in.

McCrochetypants was there, he told me, having come up to complain that he was getting water again. My husband had explained the situation, so the guy barged in and started messing around in the hall bathroom to try and fix it with some bathroom knob he bought at a flea market, scalding and freezing me in the process by turning the water on and off.

I'll be very honest -- I didn't feel bad that McCrochetypants was getting water from our place. In fact, I even felt a little glad when I found out that our hall shower was broken and I'd have to use the one that leaked into his place. I was just sorry our toilet wasn't connected too. I guess getting scalded and frozen was that karma returning to me.

But that doesn't stop me wanting to make sure McCrochetypants gets his.