My wife and I were counting down the days and almost hours until we moved from our parents to our new apartment. We were given an apartment as a wedding present, but she urgently needed repairs and we could not move in right away. So we waited a few months before moving with renewed vigor into a new life. My wife is as hospitable as she is curious, so she went to get acquainted with the neighbors, homemade cakes to please everybody. And on my own head I met a single father, who lived one floor down. He had three kids, all young, the oldest was eleven. They became good friends because his wife loved heartwarming stories, and Nicholas loved to tell the same stories about his bad ex-wife and how hard life was for him and his children. Little by little he aroused sympathy, and at some point he started asking us to look after the eldest, or to take the six-year-old daughter to school instead of him, or to feed them with something…
My wife was happy to take care of the kids, but I couldn’t say anything. This went on for over half a year, until one day I pulled my back and lay sick at home while my wife went out for a shift at the nail salon. A neighbor came by again asking me to watch the kids, because he was invited to a friend’s birthday party and couldn’t take the little ones with him. His youngest daughter was two years old, and I could still watch the older ones, but I didn’t dare take such a small child. I was lying all the time, I couldn’t even walk to the kitchen, and I had to carry the child in my arms and make sure he didn’t misbehave… I turned him down.
The man then went away alone and left my eleven-year-old son in charge. He was relatively aware of how to feed it, what to do, but was not prepared for the fact that the little sister will choke and begin to suffocate. He ran to the neighbors in terror, the girl was rescued, and they called an ambulance out of fear. After they arrived, the doctors contacted the child welfare authorities and reported that the three children had been alone all day and almost died. They immediately came to such a drama, deprived the single father of his parental rights for a while, and took the children to the orphanage. Now he goes around trying to get them back, and blames me and my wife for everything.
– If you had looked after them back then, none of this would have happened! – reminds me slyly of my neighbor.
My wife and I recently had our first child. The baby is still tiny, but several times strangers have come to the house on the neighbor’s tip. When the baby cries (and babies often do), he immediately calls the guardian and says that we are here abusing the baby and he screams violently. He makes up all kinds of things to deprive us of our parental rights, and there is no help for him. We have already fought many times, but to no avail. We can’t move either – we invested so much money in repairs. We pray that our son will grow up as soon as possible and not cry so loudly, although it is not certain that the neighbor will not come up with something new to spoil our nerves.
