Karma is a bitch.

When I was a boy I had a dog. He was my very best friend. I played with him all the time, took him for walks, and taught him tricks. One thing I didn’t do that often was clean up his poop.

I’d let him out into the dog run and he’d do his business, and I only cleaned it up when my mother had enough and yelled at me to go deal with it. In the summer time it could get pretty fragrant. I was a teenager, so I was oblivious to bad smells. I was a walking bad smell.

One of the tricks I taught him was to “speak.” I loved my dog, and so I loved the sound of his bark. “Oh, he’s talking to me,” I would say. He could be outside barking his brains out at a squirrel, and I’d report, “Listen, he’s talking to that squirrel.”

It never occurred to me that my neighbors might not appreciate the smell of his feces or the sound of his barking.

I don’t have a dog anymore. Due to allergies, my kids have a snake and a reptard and neither of them poop outside or bark. My neighbors, however, have a dog. Their dog poops, and the poop smells, and like I was as a teenager, they are decidedly lacking in regular attendance to feces removal. What’s more, the dog also barks, and also like I was, the neighbors don’t seem to mind.

On warm and sunny weekends I like to sit on my back deck, drink beer, and read a book. I don’t like to listen to barking dogs and smell baking dog poop while doing this.

Karma is a bitch.

It also appears to be exponential, because the lack of consideration doesn’t stop with the barking and the poop. There is also a cat. This is a free range cat. This cat has ripped apart my garbage many times. It has also crapped on my lawn. It has also had numerous nocturnal encounters. I wonder if cats actually enjoy copulating, because I can’t imagine that anything that caused an animal to make sounds like Britney Spears in a blender would feel good.

As to the neighbors themselves, there are a lot of them. There used to be a man, a woman, and two boys. Other than the dog, they were okay. Then the man left. Then the woman started getting dropped off by a parade of different men on Saturday mornings wearing the clothes she wore to work on Friday. I’m not judging, just elaborating, although I did make a comment to my wife about her putting the “rash” in white trash.

Then she stopped doing that, and another man moved in, and he brought his cars with him.

Then her sister moved in. Since I mentioned Britney once already, I’ll do it again. The sister made the pop diva look like a Rhodes Scholar. The sister brought the aforementioned cat, and her boyfriend, and they both brought their cars.

We don’t have front driveways on our block; we have an alley and the ability to build garages out back. I’m not a handy guy and didn’t want a garage, so I ripped up the 20X20 foot parking pad and put in more grass because I wanted a bigger lawn for my kids to play in. As a result, I need to park on the street in front of my house. This was my decision and I stand by it.

My neighbors have room to park three cars out back. They have five cars. I have never seen any of these cars parked in back. They park in front of my house. One car was in front of my house for five months and didn’t move the entire time. I realize that I don’t own the street in front of my house and don’t have a legitimate complaint, but it added to the annoyance. I don’t mind having to walk a bit, except when it’s 20 below and I have to haul a hundred pounds of groceries through a foot of snow.

They also smoke, and they seem to think that the sidewalk in front of my house is a perfectly acceptable ashtray.

They also don’t appear to own a snow shovel or a lawnmower. I’ve seen them “mow” a couple of times using a weed trimmer for the entire lawn. It ended up looking like a four-year-old drank a half dozen Red Bull and then cut his own hair while riding a roller coaster.

They also like to party.

I should note that the kids (the sister brought one too) are pretty okay, so I’m leaving them out of this. It’s the adults I don’t like. They like to drink late at night. They like to invite their friends. Their friends like to bring their cars. They like to play loud music. They like to talk really loud. They like it when I don’t sleep.

Yes, I’ve talked to them several times about their numerous shortcomings as members of the human race. I don’t think I was getting through, however, because I’m not fluent in redneck.

Then, one day, a “For Sale” sign showed up on the lawn.

This was when the market was tanking, and I’d seen such signs come and go without the house changing hands, so I wasn’t going to celebrate yet. Nevertheless, I crossed every body part I owned and sent my kids out to a nearby field to hunt for four-leaf clovers.

Then, one day, The “For Sale” sign had a “C/S” sticker on it, for “Conditional Sale.” My heart started to pound. I wanted to track down the potential buyer’s mortgage broker and bribe him to approve it. Anyone would be better these guys.

Then, one day, The “C/S” sticker changed to a “SOLD” sticker. That same day my wife and I learned the difference between big “C” Champagne and little “c” champagne. Big “C” Champagne comes from the area of the same name, whereas the little “c” stuff is known as sparkling wine. Apparently the difference is more than one of simple geography. There is a major price difference as well.

Then, one day, the white trash neighbors became someone else’s problem.

Then the new neighbors moved in. They don’t smoke. They don’t party. They don’t have pets. They have one car and they always park it out back.

The universe, it seems, has decided that the sins of my teenage years have been atoned for.