Carolyn Hax: Anonymous Letter to Neighbor

[cereta]

Dear Carolyn:

One neighbor, "Julie," takes indifferent care of her lawn, and it has never bothered us. Another neighbor, "Neil," is very lawn-conscious and sent Julie an anonymous letter asking her to take better care of her lawn.

Julie now gets professional spraying and mowing. I'm self-conscious that Julie thinks we're the letter-writers (we live closer to her than Neil does). I don't want to tell Julie we didn't write the letter, because then it will be clear we know who did. If we're extra friendly to Julie it may look like we're trying to make up for doing something so aggressive. Is there any way to signal to her that we don't care if her lawn is a little long and scraggly?

-- Walk on My Lawn, I Don't Care

Treat Julie as you always have, and stay out of it except to tell Neil, on behalf of all who have ever received one, that anonymous notes are a chickencrap way to speak his mind. Julie pays in paranoia for his lack of spine? He's OK with that? So not cool.

Comments

[cereta]

I'm going to take what is probably an unpopular position: I think LW should tell Julie who sent the letter. Maybe because I know what it's like to live in a hostile neighborhood, but I don't think it's fair to Julie to let her wonder and worry which of her neighbors is angry with her. Admittedly this is a sort spot with me; a couple of really bad experiences (and generalized anxiety) have left me with a worry that my friends, the people who say they like me, really don't. If I were Julie, the whole neighborhood would be poisoned for me because I could never know if the person being nice to me was the person who sent that nastygram. And if I found out that someone else knew who sent it and didn't say, I wouldn't be happy with that person.

[misbegotten]

the whole neighborhood would be poisoned for me

This hit home for me, and was sort of what I was thinking. I mean, LW is not responsible for Julie's feelings. But if they're friends at all, it seems like the decent thing to do is to say, "I know you got an anonymous letter and I feel bad about it."

Ugh. People.

[cereta]

Yeah. This is why I have never thought anon memes are benign, at least not the kind that involve shitting on people without putting your name to it. If you don't know who has said/done something, it means anyone might have done it, and that is a really unfun way to live.

[delight]

+1. I've never been on a straightforward anon meme, but someone left me a comment on the very first DW love meme ever that said "What a pathetic waste of space you are" and the host told me no one else was getting mean comments so it was definitely targeted specifically at me, and ... so in 9 years or something like that of DW, I've never done a love meme again.

I would absolutely tell Julie who did it.

[minoanmiss]

Some people are freeaking terrible.

You are a delight. It's even in your username!

[lilysea]

I am *so* sorry that happened to you! :(

The whole point of love memes is to say nice things!

If people don't have anything nice to say, THEY SHOULDN'T COMMENT ON A LOVE MEME!

[minoanmiss]

I totally agree with you.

OTOH, I'm not sure I would have the cast gonads to do that in the LW's position. I definitely would say something like "you've invested a lot of effort in your lawn and it looks nice but if it's stressing you out you don't have to -- we liked your lawn's cheerful casualness before too." (this is a rough draft. I would work on this more before actually saying it.)

Neil, OTOH, is a spineless twit and who cares about a lawn that is not a health hazard, anyway? I would only care about my neighbor's lawn if there were rotting animals or sewage on it.

[conuly]

Oh, man, I got a letter like that I'd definitely not do shit to my lawn. Next year, bring on the wildflowers.

[cereta]

Someone called the city on us at one point when we'd both been sick for a couple of weeks (we have the most fertile soil in the world here, so things grow stupidly fast here). People on my street leave beer cans in the street (or in our trash can), liquor bottles on our lawn, Circle K cups everywhere (like, I literally saw one guy walking down the street just whip his into someone's lawn when he was done), but hey, our lawn was shaggy and we had a three-foot-high thistle plant by our driveway (no where near the neighbor's property), so we got a nastygram.

PS The icon is of a weed flower we get in our back year every year. They grow with very tall grass that looks like but does not smell like chives, blossoms, and disappears. If the were in my front lawn, I would definitely leave them there while they were blossoming.

[kaberett]

I don't want to tell Julie we didn't write the letter, because then it will be clear we know who did.

... what? I. What?

Because... you know the letter existed at all? I suppose? But you don't specify that she's never mentioned it to you, and there's all sorts of ways to gently nudge people into mentioning said to you if you want the excuse to go "gosh really how awful it wasn't us"?