Option B – Persuasive

There has always been problems in my neighborhood. Most of them are about people treating minor problems as major problems. I have personally been trying to resolve one of them for just over two years now. From my experience so far, our neighbor is making it extremely difficult to get to a consensus with. All of his suggestions are always an attempt to benefit him, seemingly dis-benefit us, or create more work for the both of us in contrast with how it is already. All I ask of him, is to go on with problems that are more important in his life that are worth more to deal with, rather than taking the time out of both our hands to weakly argue why he wants to basically create more work for the both of us. The major factor is the fact that our house’s foundation and driveway is slightly elevated. Our drainage pipe is what they keep yapping about, and we even have an extension that barely wraps around the corner of our house and over the incline. Where would the water go to freeze if we were to do anything else with the drainage pipe?

Now, by normal means, it will flow down towards the edge of his driveway. They ended up complaining about an area less than a quarter of their driveway being icy. Even if we remove our pipe or blocked the water flow from coming down the drainage pipe, their own drainage pipe gives them the same problem they were whining about. What is the better option here; spread the ice out over a greater distance just so we have two people dealing with ice at two different times of the day, or letting all the water concentrated at a smaller area and have one person deal with all that ice? If we separate where the water goes, there is going to be a greater area of ice. That means the sidewalks have a greater chance of becoming icy, which increases both our chances of getting fined by request of a pedestrian for inconsiderate property management. I tried to suggest that I was not in favor of his suggestion. Everytime I attempted to collaborate with this man, he always repeats, “Why should we be the ones with an ice rink in our driveway?” or, “Why should I be the only one dealing with the ice?” He treated this as an actual argument, rather than a cooperative and collaborative discussion, which I had been explicitly telling him that I wanted everytime I started the conversation. I can clearly see his point in terms of equality, because by his perspective, it should be our responsibility to manage the water that comes from our own rooftop, which would eventually freeze and possibly harm any inattentive walkers. The only arguments he could ever seem to muster against me, is that he “should not be the only one slipping and sliding,” or be the only one dealing with “the water that flows down from your side.”

Ironically, throughout one cycle of all four seasons, they have never parked their truck in their driveway. They always parked it beside the sidewalk infront of their house. Their reason for doing that could be relatable to ours, where we do not have any space for a fourth car, except the sidewalk. We also do not want anyone parking their cars by the sidewalk in front of our house because the nearest available space becomes a three minute walk, which kills during harsh winters. Our neighbours, however? They just never park anything in their garage nor driveway, except for one family SUV, which occupies about a third of their whole space. What they were complaining about was an area, less than one fourth of their whole driveway, becoming layered with ice, where they never park. What is worse about this, is the fact that they want us to have our water running down our driveway into the sidewalk. Their driveway is unique in a certain way, where the water that flows down along the edge of their driveway does not actually run into the sidewalk. The sidewalk is elevated slightly above the end of their driveway, so that water can not really run above it at all. They have absolutely no risk of frozen water slipping pedestrians who pass by their house via the sidewalk. We do if we let water run down our driveway.

I have asked my parents about this issue before, and the first few times I brought this up, they replied to me, “Do not worry about it. They are just making issues for us.” Since then, all the responses I got from my parents about our neighbour’s lopsided suggestions and arguments became appeasements. They suggested that they did not want to care anymore when they said, “There is no point in arguing with them anyway.” At this point, I decided to follow their idea of appeasing them. All I have seen is our water drainage pipe extender being tampered with and thrown somewhere onto our grass field. It became infuriating to do nothing about, but it showed how he really was taking a minor concern and turning it into many bigger problems for the both of us. It felt extremely tempting to take action and suppress their tampering. In the end, I decided it was best to just leave them be to avoid worsening the conflict, with hope that they eventually realize that they are only making their issue with us worse for themselves.