But he wouldn’t listen. The kids had decided to go fishing, and I explained I’d let them since they’d been so good about staying away from the lake. But as soon as they got their rods out, here comes Oswald again.
“That’s it, I’ve had it with you polluting my lake! Do you have any idea how much environmental damage those hooks and lines can do?”
“But we’re just fishing, we’re not hurting anything!” Sheldon tried to explain. With that, he stomped back inside.
The kids were destr0yed. Again.
The next day, I went out to hang more laundry and what do I see but a fence going up in the lake, dividing it right down the middle.
I was surprised.
“Oswald, you can’t do this! That lake belongs to both of our properties,” I said. “Actually, I can.
And I just did,” he smirked. “That lake is mine, and I’ll do whatever I want with it.”
“But what about my kids? They love playing out here, you can’t just take that away from them!”
Oswald shrugged.
“Not my problem. They need to find somewhere else to play.”
As we were driving back home the next evening, I saw an excavator in our backyard.
To my horror, the excavator was in the process of burying our half of the lake under a mountain of dirt. “No, no, no!” I cried, jumping out of the car.
The kids followed, equally devastated. “Mom, they’re k*lling the fishies!” Austin wailed. At that point, I knew I had to stop this.
I immediately stormed over to the workers. “What do you think you’re doing?! Get that thing out of my backyard right now!”
“Sorry ma’am, we’ve been hired to fill in this section of the lake.
Not our call.”
I whirled around to see Oswald standing there. “You!” I shouted. “How dare you do this?
That’s our property, you can’t just get rid of it!”
“That’s your property but the lake belongs to me,” he smiled. “I’m just deleting it because it’s been nothing but a nuisance, lowering my property value.”
I was seething. “You’re insane!
This is illegal, you can’t just bulldoze our land.”
His entire backyard was flooded within minutes, and then the water began entering his house.
“What the—?!” he shouted as he rushed inside. “Oswald, do something! Stop this!
The water’s going to destr0y everything,” Patricia yelled. I could see the workers looking at each other in panic. And I guess Oswald also realized it.
“You idiots!” he yelled at the workers. “I’m not paying you a cent! Get out of here!”
Once the workers were gone, I quickly hired my own crew to change our section of the lake.
Within a few days, the water was back to normal and the kids were out there fishing and playing to their hearts’ content.
