A few years ago, a man moved into our peaceful town and disrupted our usual way of life.
As we later discovered, the new neighbor was a former soldier. He and his wife immediately caught the attention of the other residents. People regarded them with suspicion: they were very different from the locals. However, I honestly couldn’t understand why there was so much prejudice against them. They had purchased the land legally and didn’t bother anyone.
His yard was filled with all sorts of things. When we arrived at the dacha on a Saturday, we were greeted with a “pleasant surprise”: a huge pile of gravel right in front of our door.
My first thought was to deal with the problem immediately, but I decided to postpone it until the next day.
And then I realized that I could never find peace with this man. I didn’t want to wait for what was deemed “appropriate.” So, that night, I took a shovel and dumped half of the gravel onto my property.
In the morning, the neighbor looked bewildered. He stood on the doorstep, staring at his reduced pile of gravel, seemingly trying to figure out what had happened. When he approached me, I calmly said:
– Since you decided to throw gravel at my door, it means part of it is now mine. Consider it a rental.
He remained silent for a long moment, then muttered something like:
— Smart, right?
We now have extra gravel that we can use to repair the road. And the neighbor started avoiding any direct communication.
