52 Comments

LOVE IT! might be the best story yet

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It was my family and we felt the same, and we would also like to apologize.

All is well.

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I pranked a classmate of mine back in the '70s when I was 15 or so. It was during the CB craze; he had just gotten one and was trying to chat with truckers. We had a set of walkie-talkies that used CB frequencies, so I went to channel 19 and pretended to be "The Georgia Peach", a female trucker talking all sexy and willing to hook up. He didn't have a car, so he couldn't make the date...but he sure bragged about his experience the next day at school.

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Your Dad sounds a bit like mine... beer, electronics repair, HAM Radio... we actually loved our neighbors though. Mrs. Chandley would make a terrific lemon cake. ;-)

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Rufus Winker is going to be a great band name/hit song/album name

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When world’s collide; was just reading Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart….her chapter 2 includes Shadenfreude…

Witty and caring writers. ❤️

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I had similar people living next to me called the Baders. Had a Bassett hound that always took a shit in my yard even when they were outside watching. Many stories

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This passage could very well be the seeds of a "pilot" episode of a sitcom.

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But why am I singing the title of this post to Raspberry Beret? And why do I now need a song about A Boy Named Ruf?

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Hats off to your dad. That's one mighty fine practical joke. 😄

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And we wonder where Jeffy's spiky humor comes from!

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We got along with most of the neighbors, except this one girl who lived at the end of the block. Her mom yelled at all us kids for not wanting to play with her, but she hated our street games. My mom got involved and sent us to her house, telling us to be nice. The girl spent what seemed like hours setting up “Mouse Trap.” We didn’t realize the setup was supposed to be the fun part. Years later, we felt a little betrayed when we learned my older sister secretly dated her brother. BTW, future band members of Pantera lived on the next block over in “The Loud House.”

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I recollect from my youth in a small Iowa Mississippi River town how being mean was fairly commonplace and accepted as just how things went. As a new comer to town in the early 70s it was particularly painful at times. But, as my dad would grumble, ‘don’t let the small shit get you down’, and it’s corollary, ‘it’s all small shit’, helped give a bit of perspective. Ah yes, good times indeed.

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This is almost a pants pee.

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I'm amazed this never became a song. (Unless it did.)

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Our neighbor feud included my mom & dad letting my brother and I build a skate halfpipe in our side yard, a mere 25 feet from said neighbor -- at one point the rift included someone leaving a severed deer head (with antlers) in our backyard. Good times.

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