We are a Beatles-hating family, a Wings-intolerant crew with no patience for any Paul McCartney venture, ever. This is an ironclad policy, and includes:

Maggie is also a certified teacher of yoga and has trained in far-off places (Bali? I think Bali). In fact, I donated $20 to her GoFundMe when she asked people to pay for her to have a wild adventure of yoga-ness in Bali (I’m sticking to Bali). I figured I better contribute because she lived next door and this was before the crazy train of 2015-2016 rolled into the alley. It seemed safer to be supportive. She never sent a thank you email and she blogged 2 entries and then stopped.

My nanny is everyone’s nanny?

I’ve noticed that the many strange run-ins I’ve had with Maggie over the years keep popping into my mind. The first weird one was the first winter we lived in this house. We had a nanny, Nima (fake name alert!) from Bhutan (real place alert!) who was the nicest, warmest, mildest person. One day in mid-December I came home from work and found packages for Maggie in our foyer. I brought them next door and left them outside the door. The next day more packages for Maggie were in my foyer.

I asked Nima but all she knew was the delivery guy had mentioned a note on the house next door.

Again I brought over the packages but this time I used my powers of perception (my eyes!) to notice and read the note on Maggie’s front door. “Please deliver packages next door. Our doorbell is broken.”

I found the husband and asked what was up with the note. “Oh,” he said. “Your nanny is home, so we thought it was easier.”

“Isn’t Maggie at home?” I asked. Because Maggie was home. She had no job. She used to be in TV as she liked to discuss constantly, but now she wasn’t.

“Maggie is, but she’s usually in the back.”

Somehow I communicated that my nanny was not their doorwoman, and they should fix the doorbell and remove the sign, but not necessarily in that order. They did, and we never discussed it again.

Now, years later I am kicking myself for not picking up the small strange things she did. Did she think I wouldn’t notice that my nanny and I were doing favors for her without agreeing to it? Did she think we were stupid? Did she think that my nanny was everybody’s nanny?

It is the personality trait that I loathe that most, that get-over quirk that no one else seems to mind, and that drives me crazy too. For example, Fruit-bowl dad was a parent of a friend of Daisy’s who elicited the same reaction in me.

Fruit-bowl dad was a die-hard freeloader

A few years later after the non-pivotal doorbell/nanny era, we were friends with a family with a kid in Daisy’s class. All the kids in Daisy’s school had a hard time socializing, so when kids connected, usually the parents socialized with the family with gusto.

Daisy went to a tiny public-private-partnership school for kid with learning delays. The school was founded and run by two geniuses, who created this incredible program that the Department of Education funded, if you sued the school system. What that meant was that very rich and middle class and poor families from the five boroughs had kids there and we all mixed and mingled. I feel horrible complaining about the parents, because we were all so anxious about our children, but I will push through the guilt.

The parents had nothing in common except intense fear about the futures of our specific children. All the parents wanted to share the story of when they realized their child had delays and how the parent performed heroic feats to get the kid the right help. I imagined all met at the beginning of kindergarten totally caught up in our private dramas. I would have loved to have made more friends, but I was totally ferklempt.

All this to say that the parent social scene at Daisy’s school was baffling. I should admit I was probably a little defensive at that time (ahem, read majorly paranoid). Also, I had a slightly big (read: GIGANTIC) chip on my shoulder about living in Queens and since Daisy’s school was on the Upper West Side, I encountered endless people who asked stupid questions about Queens. I was ready to cut a bitch who insulted Queens, or forgot it was a borough, or wondered if garbage pickup extended there, or asked me about manicures as though everyone in Queens understands manicures. I was a piece of work too in those days, unlike my lovely self of present day.

So when Daisy really connected with Simon, we made every effort to hang out with Simon’s parents, and for a few years we made it work. We picked apples with them, had them over for brunch, did activities. But at some point our interactions I began harboring hostile feelings for the dad.

This dad was very smart, had attended a very fancy college, and seemed to have the hots for me. I should have just enjoyed the creepy attention, but I developed an antipathy toward him. He smacked his lips as he said snide things about other parents, leaving me feeling spat on and slimy. But he did this one thing that made me livid.

When this family came to our house, no matter what we did (brunch, lunch, dinner, leaving the kids at our house with the babysitter and going to dinner, or just picking up their kid), when this dad was in my house he always grabbed a piece of fruit from our fruit bowl. Sometimes he took a bite out of the fruit and sometimes he put it in his pocket, for later I guess, although why our fruit bowl was supplying his need for a future snack was beyond me. I do not recall him saying thank you, but I’ll check with Calvin on that.

One night Calvin, me, Fruit bowl and wife went to a Greek restaurant in Astoria while a sitter took care of all of the kids. After an uneventful but heavy dinner we rolled back to our house, stuffed with lamb and tzatziki and mixed dips, and Fruit-bowl dad lunged for the fruit bowl. The man had eaten half a Bronzino as well as pounds of Mediterranean olives and feta and tomatoes and he still needed a banana?

That was it for me. The next time they came over, I hid the fucking fruit bowl on top of the refrigerator. Fruit-bowl dad looked all around for the fruit bowl, but I kept its location secure. No more free fruit for him.

By the time that family moved out of NYC to the suburbs where they firmly placed their children in general ed public school, I couldn’t bear them. I would try to explain the fruit bowl issue to other parents, and none of them understood. Only Calvin could see the outrage. Fruit-bowl dad thought he was getting over—getting a free piece of fruit from the Ditmarstons, those suckers who faithfully stock the fruitbowl.

And that is Maggie. She’s trying to mug me for an apple. In her mind, she’s so smart that it’s totally logical that she should punish us with bad music, flood our basement, call 911 and CPS on us. She’s just getting over on the people and we probably won’t notice.

But I got rid of Fruit-bowl Dad. I did have hand-to-hand combat with him one Saturday and I think I lost, but that’s another story. I finally defriended him on Facebook, and it felt so good.

Could I have deterred the Maggie shitshow had I paid more attention?

I don’t think so. I do not think I have any control over her. We could have moved, I guess. That would have worked but moving out of this house has never occurred to me. I love my house even with its leaking roof and 1980s bathroom and my neighborhood and my block, especially now that I’m getting to know my neighbors, the other ones.

There was no way around it. No matter what choice I made, I would still be here, typing away in the dining room as the fans and the dehumidifiers one floor below blow air through the basement and suck moisture out of the soggy walls and sodden slab. The floor vibrates like we live on top of a turbine and I try to convince myself that some day, like Fruit-bowl dad, Maggie will pass out of our lives and away.