Personal Incidents Essay

Angie and I were friends; we would go for walks several times a week. I would invite her over for a glass of wine. She was going thru an ugly divorce and I tried to be her friend. I told her about my attorney Tom Cole and she hired him for her divorce. She was unemployed and her unemployment ran out. She wasn’t getting much child support or alimony. I felt sorry for her, I invited them to dinner, gave them food that I had left over, bought them all Christmas presents, birthday presents, last year at Easter I gave the boys a plant to give her for her porch.

She would tell me about her problems. She had trouble with Jacob; he won’t get up for school in the morning. He would stay up all night playing video games. She would repeatedly say that she is a “Peter Pan mom” she would let the boy’s roller blade in the house; bring their bicycles in the house. She couldn’t leave them alone or they would fight. I took her to a Chamber of Commerce event and we weren’t gone more than an hour and we had to leave because they were fighting.

Last winter Jacob and his friend came to my house trying to get Jimmy to come out so he could “beat his A**”. Jacob posted on Facebook that he was going to kill himself, he was cutting himself and at one point stuck a rusty nail in his foot and told the kids that he wasn’t afraid of pain he wanted to get tetanus,  he pulled a knife on the neighbor boy. On a second occasion he shoved him off of his bike. I told my son that he wasn’t allowed to play with Jacob until his attitude changed. That’s when things turned with Angie. She started blaming all of their problems on my son. Jimmy would never stay in anyone’s home if he was asked to leave. The police were never called to have Jimmy removed from anywhere. She threatened to call the police if he didn’t stop trimming my side of the hedge between our homes.

We gave Jacob extra money for his birthday for a bike that he was going to give to Jimmy. Jimmy rode the bike for 3 months. Angie saw the other neighbor D riding the bike and told him if he didn’t bring that bike to her right now she was going to call the police on him. He is 11 and was scared of her so he did. She took Jimmy’s bike. I called the police and she lied to them telling them that it was her kid’s bike and she wasn’t giving it back.

She calls me when I’m at work leaving me these ridiculous rambling voicemails. I don’t even reply to her. She is completely delusional, she likes to write stories and I’m afraid that she is believing them.  The things she said about Jimmy breaking things at my house is a joke he doesn’t break things at my house, he doesn’t wrestle or skate or run or disturb anything, he goes outside to play. Not to sound snobbish but there is nothing in her house that I would have in my house. The little tidbit about Jimmy throwing D into her wall and it leaving his body print in her wall is laughable. I asked D if he and Jimmy tusseled or if Jimmy ever hit him and he said no he did not. I played the voicemails for the police and they even grinned about that part.

She watches her boys flip Jimmy off every time they drive by. They neighbor boys aren’t allowed to play with nor do they want to hang out with Jacob. Nobody said anything to the other neighbors about him but Angie went to all of the neighbors and told them some crazy story about D’s family and mine. I know this because I was told by one of them that they” didn’t believe a word she said”.

I’m afraid to let Jimmy go outside when I’m not home. I don’t know what she will do to him. All of the anger and frustration she has because her son shows her no respect and defies her all day long is being deflected onto Jimmy.