Neighbour amaivadellam...

We're not the most outgoing couple on the block. Others gather around and share laughs and have beer in their backyards. But not us. We're perfectly happy vegetating on our couch watching reruns of Raymond or Seinfeld. Occasionally we go out for some reason and we run across our neighbors and then we wave and smile. That's probably the most contact we have with all of them - the ones next door who play loud music in the middle of the night, the ones on the opposite right side with the dog who poops on our lawn, and the ones immediately in front with an immaculate garage but don't wave or smile.

The one exception has been our immediate neighbors on the other side. From the very beginning they were kind of friendly, coming over and introducing themselves when we moved in, shoveling snow when we went away on trips (and as a result we shoveled their driveway when they were away...tis not all one sided) and in general being nice. The lady of the house suddenly mowed our lawn a couple of evenings ago much to our pleasant surprise. We'd been putting away mowing the lawn till the weekend and we were pretty grateful that someone else had saved us the trouble...although we were a bit perplexed. Maybe this was the neighborly thing to do and what would we FOBs know? Or maybe she was doing this because I am pregnant? At this point, I do need to clarify that our lawn is not big. Its a strip of grass thats maybe 8' wide and 16' long. Not a biggie to mow!

So this morning when I saw the guy next door as we were leaving for work, I went over and thanked him and told him to convey our thanks to his wife. To which he responds something about his son not needing to mow our lawn everytime. Huh? What? Turns out 'someone' told his son that it was his duty to mow their lawns and that if he couldn't do it, his parents should! Looking at our overgrown lawn, they assumed that we were the 'someone'! Unless we're really stupid or have signed some kind of bonded labor contract with their son, why would we do something like that? I told the man that it wasn't us but he wasn't satisfied. He called my husband over and asked him if he had spoken to his son about mowing the lawn. Talk about disbelief!

One part of me is mad that they could assume something like that about us! I wonder if the son had lied for some bizarre reason. I wonder if some other neighbor had actually spoken to their son like that. I also wonder if maybe the neighbors are a bit nutty after all...A part of me feels stupid for having accepted their favors unquestioningly... But what can you do? Stop her when mowing and say "No. thanks, I'll do it when I do it. Now get off my lawn?"

On the other hand, they have been nice to us after all and so I do want to clear up the confusion. How should I do that though? Any ideas?