Every neighborhood seems to have its requisite nutcase. Over the years, I’ve done informal research on this subject by asking friends if they have at least one problem neighbor. I’ve never had anyone say no.

In fact, I usually get a 20-minute diatribe on the wingnut who is terrorizing their particular block. Increasingly, ADUs and short-term rental party houses are mentioned as sources of conflict.

One of our highest priorities has always been getting along with the people who live around us. Fortunately, we’ve had nice neighbors over the years, with the exception of two we were really happy to see go. Two bad neighbors over several decades is actually pretty good.

But even one difficult neighbor can wreak a lot of havoc. Sometimes it was hard to stick to our inviolable rule: No matter what, do not escalate.

The houses in my area are in close proximity, so it doesn’t take much noise for the entire block to hear it. Still, my husband and I consider most noise to be in the category of the music of life — dogs, kids, parties, the occasional loud band. We often comment that not hearing those sounds would be the hardest part of moving to a retirement home in our old age.

But, of course, even the music of life can occasionally get seriously out of tune. Chainsaws on weekends. Or drums ever.

We also remind ourselves that for years, we were the noisiest family on the block. We had one of the few pools in the neighborhood then and multiple tree forts, a veritable attractive nuisance. Everybody came to play.

Even so, our elderly retired schoolteacher neighbor next door never complained once in her 25 years there. We could never tell whether this was because she was an incredibly sweet lady (she was) or because she was deaf. Actually, she was fairly deaf, but we never wanted to explore whether our kids had contributed to it.

The first of our two terrible neighbors was one we encountered a year after we moved in. All of a sudden we were getting annoyingly regular notices from the La Jolla Town Council that a neighbor had complained we were not maintaining our property. We were puzzled, as we took great pride in our place.

Turns out that an elderly lady down the block felt our trees were blocking the breeze, which she maintained her doctor had prescribed for her Raynaud’s syndrome. My then-husband, a physician, said What? (Raynauds, by the way, is a condition that causes the blood vessels in the extremities to narrow, restricting blood flow.)

A minor detail was that we had no common property with this woman. But she felt that all trees within a five-house radius were blocking her breeze and if we wished to be good neighbors, my husband and I would cut down all the beautiful, mature trees on our property.

Anyway, we ultimately all formed a coalition against the nasty old bat, ironically bringing the neighbors together in heretofore unparalleled harmony. Ten years later she died.

As for the second all-time terrible neighbor, she moved in while Olof and I were doing a two-year work assignment in Europe, so we were mostly spared. But by the time we returned, the other neighbors were trying to vote her off the island.

Fortunately, sensing that people were sticking extra-sharp pins up the back sides of little effigies of her, she departed and now allegedly is making a new group of neighbors’ lives miserable.

I think it is only fair to point out that it is sometimes unclear who the lunatic on the block really is. Most of the jury duty cases I’ve been in involved neighbor disputes that could best be summarized as Lots of Adults Behaving Badly. That’s been true on my street as well, but fortunately with people who don’t live on my end of the block.

Most recently, people on local social media have been commenting on whether it is legal to mount a motion-sensored camera with audio on a pole pointed directly into a neighbor’s backyard and master bedroom window. I’m so glad I don’t live next door to a person who would do this. Even the mild-mannered Olof says he’d be tempted to disable this camera by whatever means necessary should someone decide to do this to us. Fortunately, they haven’t.

In fact, after several decades in our current house, we are incredibly grateful that we’ve officially won the neighbor lottery. For many years now, we have been surrounded not only by good neighbors but stupendously wonderful neighbors — people you can count on day or night who are the epitome of kindness and consideration and who, on top of that, are great friends.

When Olof had his heart attack and head injury in 2018, my collective neighbors walked my dog four times a day and left me dinner and a bottle of wine in my fridge for when I came home from the hospital at night. If we wrote the “perfect neighbor” job description, we couldn’t have done any better.

Just so they’re clear: None of you should even think of moving.

Inga’s lighthearted looks at life appear regularly in the La Jolla Light. Reach her at inga47@san.rr.com.