At 64, I enjoyed a quiet life in the same suburban home I’d shared with my late husband for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then my electricity bill arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$227.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Nearly double my usual amount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I checked everything\u2014the meter, the appliances, the thermostat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing explained it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then one night, I heard a faint hum outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I looked through the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was my neighbor Monica’s white Tesla sitting beside my garage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And a thick black cable was plugged directly into my outdoor outlet.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I went outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMonica, what exactly are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She barely looked up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCharging my car. What’s the big deal?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I told her my electric bill had doubled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She rolled her eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou live alone. How much electricity could you possibly need?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then she offered me ten dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon’t be greedy, Eleanor. It’s just a little electricity.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That word\u2014greedy<\/em>\u2014made something inside me snap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because this wasn’t the first time Monica had taken something that wasn’t hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Months earlier, she’d taken my garden gnome and painted it blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My lawn mower had mysteriously disappeared and returned a week later with an empty tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She’d even borrowed a neighbor’s ladder and never returned it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had always stayed quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I told her to unplug the cable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She eventually did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That night, I texted my daughter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMystery solved. I know why my electric bill doubled. And I have a plan.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The next morning, I retrieved my stolen garden gnome from Monica’s yard and placed it beside my garage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I prepared a little surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That evening, Monica’s Tesla arrived again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She got out with her charging cable and walked straight toward my outlet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But my garden gnome was sitting exactly where she needed to plug in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She tried moving it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then she triggered my little setup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A container tipped over and dumped a huge splash of pink paint<\/strong> directly onto her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She stood there frozen, covered from head to toe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then she screamed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The neighbors came running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monica pointed at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYOU DID THIS ON PURPOSE!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I calmly held up my phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMonica, you’ve been taking my electricity after I told you to stop. And now you’re standing in my driveway arguing with a garden gnome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One neighbor laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then another spoke up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe’s the one who borrowed my ladder three months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suddenly, everyone started sharing stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It turned out Monica had been \u201cborrowing\u201d things from several neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The paint wasn’t the end of her problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks later, her landlord came to my door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He had seen the video\u2014but that wasn’t why he was taking action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He’d investigated further and discovered unpaid utility bills, unauthorized repairs, and damage to the property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her lease wasn’t being renewed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A month later, Monica moved out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My garden gnome returned to his rightful place beside my mailbox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I stood on the porch looking at him and remembered something my late husband used to tell me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKindness isn’t the same as silence.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For years, I’d confused keeping the peace with allowing people to walk all over me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I never made that mistake again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At 64, I enjoyed a quiet life in the same suburban home I’d shared with my late husband for decades. Then my electricity bill arrived. $227. Nearly double my usual amount. I checked everything\u2014the meter, the appliances, the thermostat. Nothing explained it. Then one night, I heard a faint hum outside. I looked through the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20918,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20915\/revisions\/20918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cehre.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}