There is an old adage that good fences make good neighbors, but the truth is, good neighbors, make good neighbors. Unfortunately, for over 15 years, the Petersens and the Yarrows were terrible neighbors.
They had moved into their pretty identical, side-by-side homes when both couples were newlyweds, and right in the beginning, Sarah Petersen and Elsa Yarrow were the best of friends.
Four years later, the two women stopped speaking to each other and their anger and resentment towards each other were boundless. This seething hate ended up splashing over into the relationship between their two husbands, and the rest of the two families.
Elsa and Sarah had started out as the best of friends. | Source: Unsplash
But how did this happen? What led to this schism? And could the two families ever be friends again? The entire neighborhood would have bet against it, and they would have been wrong.
Even though the two couples had started out on the same foot as newlyweds, things changed a lot since then. The Petersens had found their lives improving from year to year as Steve’s career took off.
They made improvements to their home, bought a new car every other year, and traveled frequently abroad with their son, David.
The Yarrows, on the other hand, didn’t flourish. Jack Yarrow found himself stalled in a dead-end position in a small firm, and the family finances had suffered. Their car was over twenty years old and falling apart, and neglect had left their once neat and trim little house looking very shabby.
While the Petersens’ garden would have won shows, the Yarrows’ yard was overgrown with weeds, and the lawn was a tangled snarl of dead runners and sickly grass.
They moved into their identical houses when they were newlyweds. | Source: Unsplash
Envy on Elsa Yarrow’s part certainly fueled her side of the feud, but it hadn’t been the root cause of the initial rift. The break had been so long ago that neither woman remembered exactly WHAT had led to it, only the anger, outrage, and hurt they still felt.
Elsa and Jack had a daughter, Mary, who was exactly David’s age — their birthdays were just two days apart — and when they were tiny and their moms got along, they used to throw one big party for both children.
If the parents were on the warpath, the two kids had continued to be close friends. Whatever the parents did, Mary and David, who attended the same school, were inseparable.
To their credit, neither family had tried to prevent the friendship, but they constantly sent each other messages through their children. Steve would say: “Tell the Yarrows I’m sick of their smoke polluting the air every Sunday!
“Tell them to move the barbecue to the other side of the house!”
Their children, Mary and David, were best friends. | Source: Unsplash
Jake would snarl at Mary: “You tell that smarmy Petersen that if he parks his car that close to mine on the curb again, I’m going to leave a dent on his fancy paint job!”
Both families constantly looked for reasons to find fault with each other. If it wasn’t the cars, it was the barbecue, or the branches of a tree invading the yard, or the Yarrow dog digging up the Petersens’ pristine lawn.
That last one was quite a doozy. Every morning at 6:30, Jack would don his bright yellow tracksuit, put their dog Gandalf on a leash, and go out for a run with the dog.
Unfortunately (or by design), Gandalf always did his business on the Petersens’ picture-perfect lawn which drove them absolutely startling mad.
On that particular day, Jack had taken Gandalf off the leash and the result was a disaster. Gandalf was happily depositing a heap of manure on the Petersens’ lawn (he was a Labrador-Great Dane mix) when he spotted the family’s beloved cat going out for its morning walk.
Throughout their childhood, the two were inseparable. | Source: Unsplash
Gandalf took off after the cat and the cat ran into the hedges then leaped up onto the wall of the house. There, it calmly sat and washed itself while Gandalf jumped and struck at the wall repeatedly in vain attempts at reaching it.
He was also barking hysterically, and since his feet were covered with mud from the wet lawn (and a dab of poo from his own efforts), he left huge paw prints all over the front of the Petersens’ house. GIANT, smeary, smelly paw prints.
Sarah heard the barking and came out on the porch to find Jack standing on the limits of his property watching his hysterical dog with what can only be described as a smirk.
Sarah called Steve, Jack called Elsa, and then both women yelled for their children. Before long they were all screaming at each other (and the dog) while Mary and David watched unhappily from the sidelines.
David sidled up to Mary and took her hand to comfort her. That would have been okay with the families if they were four or five, but Mary and David were seventeen. What neither family realized was that their children were in love.
The neighborhood called them Romeo and Juliet. | Source: Unsplash
Mary and David had been best friends from the cradle, then one day they discovered they loved each other. The whole school knew they were boyfriend and girlfriend, as did the entire neighborhood who called them Romeo and Juliet.
However, the Petersens and the Yarrows did NOT know… At least until Jack Yarrow stopped screaming for a moment and saw David holding Mary’s hand. “Take your hands off my daughter!” he screamed at David.
“Leave my son alone!” cried Sarah angrily, then she turned to David and ordered, “Don’t TOUCH that girl!”
A new quarrel erupted, and this one more vicious than any of the others, once they realized what was going on between their children.
“I don’t want my daughter involved with your arrogant, snobby son!” Elsa screamed. “Keep him away from my Mary!”
“Don’t worry, I will,” shouted Sarah. “She’s not good enough for him! He deserves a PRINCESS!”
“Take your hands off my daughter!” | Source: Unsplash
“MY DAUGHTER IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR A KING!” screeched Elsa.
Sad to say, somewhere in the middle of all the screaming, a few punches were thrown by the men, and soon both had bloody noses.
It was about then that the neighbors had enough and called the police. When the officers arrived, they found four very angry people shouting at each other — Sarah and Elsa were literally starting to tear each other’s hair out.
The end result was that Jack and Steve took a ride to the precinct to face charges of disturbing the peace and their wives had to bail them out. When the families returned, they went looking for their children.
“MARY!” Jack shouted up the stairs. “Come down right now! You are forbidden to see that boy…” But Mary didn’t come down and she didn’t answer. Mary wasn’t home and she didn’t answer her phone.,
Meanwhile, an identical scene was unreeling next door. David was gone too, so both sets of parents ended up facing each other over the fence for the second time that day.
“Your son has kidnapped my baby girl!” Elsa screamed. “I’m calling the police and he’s going to jail!”
“Leave my son alone!” | Source: Unsplash
“WHAT?” shouted Sarah. “It was that conniving minx who took my son!”
As usual, the screaming went on for a long time until the Petersens and the Yarrows saw David’s car park in the driveway, and Mary and David get out.
“Where have you been?” asked Elsa angrily. “You are not to go anywhere with that boy!”
Mary looked sadly at her mother. “David took me to the nursing home to see granny. It was her birthdate today, and since dad was arrested…”
“I wasn’t arrested!” said Jack crossly. “It was Petersen’s fault.”
“Stop it!” said Mary. “I love David, and he loves me. While you were all screaming at each other we went to take granny a bouquet of roses and a cake. SHE likes David a lot…”
The two families became friends again. | Source: Unsplash
“And who paid for the roses and the cake?” demanded Sarah viciously. “I’ll just bet it was my son…”
“Enough, Mom!” David said firmly. “We’ve had enough of the four of you making each other and us miserable! And Mom? Are you forgetting? When Dad had a bike accident last year, Mary donated blood. You were friends once, what happened? I’ll bet you don’t even know anymore! You should be ashamed of yourselves! Do what you want, but Mary and I are not part of your problem!”
David and Mary turned around and went to their respective homes leaving their parents staring at each other across the fence.
Early the next morning, Jack and Elsa woke Mary up. “Get up sleepyhead!” cried Elsa. “Get up and get dressed!”
“What?” asked Mary. “But it’s Saturday!”
The Petersens and the Yarrows shared many grandchildren. | Source: Unsplash
Jack was grinning. “Yep,” he replied. “And this time the barbecue is over at the Petersens and we are going to be late!”
From that day on, the two families started working on restoring their old friendship and discovered that being good neighbors required a lot less effort and was more pleasant. Many years later, they all became grandparents of David and Mary’s children.
What can we learn from this story?
- Children have the right to choose their own paths. The Petersens and the Yarrows wanted to dictate terms to their children, but they were in love and made their own decisions.
- Anger and resentment grow like weeds and choke out love and friendship. The Petersens and the Yarrows had started out as friends but grudges and anger turned them into enemies.
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If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about a woman who comes to her neighbor’s rescue when she goes into labor and helps her home-deliver her baby, only to discover that the father of the child was her own husband.
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