After I Asked Her Not to Sunbathe in Front of My Son’s Window

“But I can’t even open them to get fresh air anymore!” Jake slumped against the bed.

“This is so weird. Tommy came over to study yesterday, and he walked into my room and just froze. Like, mouth open, eyes bulging, full system shutdown. His mom probably won’t let him come back!”

I sighed, closing the blinds. “Has she been out there like that every day?”

“Every. Single. Day. Mom, I’m dying. I can’t live like this. I’m going to have to become a mole person and live in the basement. Do we have Wi-Fi down there?”

After a week of watching my teenage son practically parkour around his room to avoid glimpsing our exhibitionist neighbor, I decided to have a friendly chat with Shannon.

I usually mind my own business when it comes to what people do in their yards, but Shannon’s idea of ‘sunbathing’ was more like a public performance.

She’d lounge around in the skimpiest of bikinis, sometimes even going topless, and there was no way to miss her every time we stood near Jake’s window.

“Hey, Shannon,” I called out, aiming for that sweet spot between ‘friendly neighbor’ and ‘concerned parent’ tone of voice. “Got a minute?”

She lowered her oversized sunglasses, the ones that made her look like a bedazzled praying mantis. “Renee! Come to borrow some tanning oil? I just got this amazing coconut one. Makes you smell like a tropical vacation and poor life choices.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk about your sunbathing spot. See, it’s right in front of my son Jake’s window, and he’s 15, and—”

“Oh. My. God.” Shannon sat up, her face splitting into an unnervingly wide grin. “Are you seriously trying to police where I can get my vitamin D? In my own yard?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Listen, sweetie,” she cut me off, examining her hot pink nails like they held the secrets to the universe. “If your kid can’t handle seeing a confident woman living her best life, maybe you should invest in better blinds. Or therapy. Or both. I know this amazing life coach who could help him overcome his repression. She specializes in aura cleansing and interpretive dance.”

“Shannon, please. I’m just asking if you could maybe move your chair literally anywhere else in your yard. You have two acres!”

“Hmm.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully, then reached for her phone. “Let me check my schedule. Oh, look at that! I’m booked solid with not caring about your opinion until… forever.”

I retreated, wondering if I’d somehow stumbled into an episode of “Neighbors Gone Wild.” But Shannon wasn’t done with me yet. Not by a long shot.

Two days later, I opened my front door to grab the newspaper and stopped dead in my tracks.

There, proudly displayed in the middle of my perfectly manicured lawn, was a toilet bowl. Not just any toilet. It was an old, filthy, tetanus-inducing throne, complete with a handwritten sign that read: “FLUSH YOUR OPINION HERE!”

I knew it was Shannon’s handiwork.

“What do you think of my art installation?” her voice floated over from her yard. She was perched on her lounger, looking like a very smug, very underdressed cat.

“I call it ‘Modern Suburban Discourse.’ The local art gallery already wants to feature it in their ‘Found Objects’ exhibition!” she laughed.

“Are you kidding me?” I gestured at the porcelain monstrosity. “This is vandalism!”

“No, honey, this is self-expression. Like my sunbathing. But since you’re so interested in giving opinions about what people do on their property, I thought I’d give you a proper place to put them.”

I stood there on my lawn, staring at Shannon cackling like a hyena, and something inside me just clicked.

You know that moment when you realize you’re playing chess with a pigeon? The bird’s just going to knock over all the pieces, strut around like it won, and leave droppings everywhere. That was Shannon.

led my arms and sighed. Sometimes the best revenge is just sitting back and watching karma do its thing.

The weeks that followed tested my patience. Shannon turned her yard into what I can only describe as a one-woman Woodstock. The sunbathing continued, now with an added commentary track.

she invited friends, and her parties rattled windows three houses down, complete with karaoke renditions of “I Will Survive” at 3 a.m. She even started a “meditation drum circle” that sounded more like a herd of caffeinated elephants learning to Riverdance.

Through it all, I smiled and waved. Because here’s the thing about people like Shannon — they’re so busy writing their own drama that they never see the plot twist coming.

And oh boy, what a twist it was.

It was a pleasant Saturday. I was baking cookies when I heard sirens. I stepped onto my porch just in time to see a fire truck screech to a halt in front of my house.

“Ma’am,” a firefighter approached me, looking confused. “We received a report about a sewage leak?”

Before I could respond, Shannon appeared, wearing a concerned citizen face that deserved an Oscar. “Yes, officer! That toilet over there… it’s a health hazard! I’ve seen things… terrible things… leaking! The children, won’t someone think of the children?”

The firefighter looked at the bone-dry decorative toilet, then at Shannon, then back at the toilet. His expression suggested he was questioning every life choice that led him to this moment.

“Ma’am, making false emergency reports is a crime. This is clearly a lawn ornament,” he paused, probably wondering why he had to say a phrase like that as part of his job.

“A dry lawn ornament. And I’m a firefighter, not a health inspector.”

Shannon’s face fell faster than her sunscreen coverage rating. “But the aesthetic pollution! The visual contamination!”

“Ma’am, we don’t respond to aesthetic emergencies, and pranks are definitely not something we respond to.”

With that, the firefighters left the property, but karma wasn’t finished with Shannon. Not by a long shot.

The fire truck drama barely slowed her down. If anything, it inspired her to reach new heights. Literally.

One scorching afternoon, I spotted Shannon hauling her leopard-print lounger up a ladder to her garage roof. And there she was, perched up high like some sort of sunbathing gargoyle, armed with a reflective tanning sheet and what looked like an industrial-sized margarita.

I was in my kitchen, elbow-deep in dinner dishes, and wondering if this was the universe’s way of testing my blood pressure when the sound of chaos erupted outside.

I heard a splash and a screech that sounded like a cat in a washing machine. I rushed outside to find Shannon face-down in her prized petunias, covered from head to toe in mud.

Turned out that her new rooftop sunbathing spot had met its match — her malfunctioning sprinkler system.

Our neighbor, Mrs. Peterson, dropped her gardening shears. “Good Lord! Shannon, are you trying to recreate Baywatch? Because I think you missed the beach part. And the running part. And the… well… every part.”

Shannon scrambled up, caked in mud. Her designer bikini was now accessorized with grass stains and what appeared to be a very surprised earthworm.

Following the incident, Shannon was as quiet as a church mouse. She stopped sunbathing in front of Jake’s window, and the dirty toilet bowl on my lawn disappeared faster than a magician’s rabbit.

Shannon invested in a privacy fence around her backyard, and our long suburban nightmare was over.

“Mom,” Jake said at breakfast the next morning, cautiously raising his blinds, “is it safe to come out of witness protection now?”

I smiled, sliding him a plate of pancakes. “Yeah, honey. I think the show’s been canceled. Permanently.”

“Thank god,” he muttered, then grinned. “Though I kind of miss the toilet. It was weirdly starting to grow on me. Like a really ugly lawn gnome.”

“Don’t even joke about that. Eat your pancakes before she decides to install a whole bathroom set!” I said, sharing a hearty laugh with my son as we looked at the wall around Shannon’s yard.