By William Keene

It was a Friday, in October, at around 3:45 pm when I incurred some wisdom during a rite of passage while losing my mind in the process. I was sitting calmly on my beige sofa chair, resting my swollen feet on my grey suede ottoman, eating my end-of-week celebratory piece of red velvet cake, essentially half the cake, and enjoying an episode of Peaky Blinders, when, all of a sudden, an aggravating humming noise coming from a leaf blower outside of my house distracted me.

I lazily moved my neck to look to my left and saw Teddy, my neighbourhood landscaper, standing there, acting all tough. He was wearing his rugged brown leather work boots, oversized light washed jeans that looked as if he rolled in the dirt while wearing them, a neon yellow construction jacket with orange stripes, dark-black sunglasses, and an unnecessarily large white and orange leaf blower strapped to his back that looked as if he was wearing a jetpack. Teddy was clearing the leaves. *@#*!. Teddy is a landscaper who lives at the end of my street, who, for an unknown reason, just dislikes my family. Ever since we moved to my street, Teddy has reflected his distaste for my family in his choice to provide contracts for landscape services to everyone but my family.

As I observed the leaf-blowing through my window, I noticed that Teddy kindly took the liberty of constructing a ten-foot-long and one-foot-in height pile of leaves from other people’s lawns on the road parallel to my garden’s boulevard. I waited to see how this would play out. One would think that he was preparing to put the leaves in the paper yard-waste bags, although, knowing Teddy, he often did the exact opposite of what a normal person would do. Teddy positioned himself at the left end of the pile while facing my house, slowly lifted and aimed the black plastic barrel of the leaf blower towards my front garden, and let loose. Immediately, as he switched on the high-pitched engine powering his leaf blower, it was as if he threw a stick of dynamite into the leaf pile. Leaves were flying toward my lawn like a swarm of bees, including an entire summer’s worth of grey dirt and rocks that had collected along the curb. I could not just sit and watch this man commit such a blatant injustice to my house.

I got up immediately. Without even putting my shoes on, I opened my door, stood at the top of the stairs at the entrance of my house and yelled, “Do not put other people’s leaves on my lawn!” The idiot ignored me, so I tried again; “Teddy! Do not put other people’s lea–”
“*@# you!”
Teddy’s response infuriated me. I asked myself, What motivated him to speak to me like that? Still shoeless, I rushed down my steps, through the leaves that scattered the red brick walkway to my house and stood on the sidewalk. Now, the only thing between Teddy and me was my garden boulevard. I wanted war, and the boulevard was no man’s land.

This time, when I addressed Teddy, I took a different approach; I asked him in a severe tone, looking him dead in the eyes as if my skinny self could intimidate him, “Why the hell are you blowing everyone’s leaves on my lawn?” Teddy had a creative response, “Because the leaves fell from your tree.” I do not think he realized that the tree he talked about was on my neighbour’s property. Nevertheless, I had built up so much adrenaline from this interaction I just had to yell at him. I screamed, “You know what, Teddy, you are a *!@#*, no one likes you, and you are a terrible person!” Teddy’s jaw dropped, revealing his teeth that looked like he chewed rocks, which prompted me to walk away. Surprisingly, Teddy remained silent, causing awkward suspense between us and the walk back to my house to feel as if it were ten minutes.

Imbecile, degenerate, and ‘village idiot’ are the descriptive words that enter my mind when I now think of the abomination of a landscaper that is my neighbour, Teddy. As I look back on my altercation with Teddy, I believe that what motivated my hostile reaction to his leaf-blowing was the accumulation of unfair things he had done to my family without any consequences. Whether it was his refusal to do our snow removal while doing it for everyone else on the street, tampering with our irrigation system, or irrational leaf-blowing, Teddy purposefully displayed his deliberate, unjustified dislike of my family, which made me angry.

Although, I view the experience I had with Teddy as, in a way, a rite of passage because it was the first time I had ever stood up to an adult as a representative of my family which prompted me to extract a valuable lesson from the experience that has shaped the way I am as a person. Not only was Teddy’s reaction terrible, but mine was too. By getting verbal with Teddy even more so than he did with me over something as ridiculous as leaves, I lowered myself to the level of stupidity that resides in him. With this in mind, if I ever again find myself in a similar situation to the one with Teddy, I now know the most effective response is to not let my emotions overcome my rational thinking: is it worth compromising my moral principles just for the sake of a petty shouting match?

That being said, Teddy is still a *@!#*.