Greetings, and thanks in advance for your input. I am new to this topic, and I want to say clearly up front all I am trying to do is better understand and improve a situation.

My next door neighbor has been difficult to get along with. I'm a late-30s male civilian. My wife and I have lived here for a couple of years. We introduced ourselves in a friendly manner when we moved in, but since then have had maybe 10 interactions total with "Jim". Without exception, every single one of those has been him confronting us over some normal activity. Our neighbors have had similar experiences and leave him alone as best they can, as do we, but some things are unavoidable.

We are pretty sure Jim is a Vietnam veteran: wears the hats and is of the right age. I hate to think I am stereotyping, but I don't know how else to describe it. "Angry" is the only word that really seems to fit. No matter how I search for information, it always seems to come back to PTSD. So, first, I would appreciate some general education on the topic, other links, etc. If I am in the right place, the question I have is: What do I do?

Let me describe a couple of typical interactions... 1) I'm taking out the recycling at a reasonable hour in the morning, I drop a can, Jim opens the door and scowls at me, slams the door. 2) I decide to put up a fence between our yards, go over to let Jim know what I'm planning, he says "I don't care what the f--- you do, just make sure it's not over the line." 3) Last night my car alarm went off at 10pm for the first time ever, I go out to shut it off, it goes off again 5 minutes later, I go out to disconnect the battery, Jim opens the door, scowls, slams the door.

Today was horrible though. I was trying to fix the car alarm, so of course it went off again (this is the middle of the afternoon). Jim comes out, says "What the f--- are you doing." I say "I think you can see I'm trying to fix the alarm." He says "You f---ing woke me up last night." This is not true, as he watches TV with the sound up loud almost every night until 1 or 2 AM. I say "The alarm went off by itself last night. You saw me disconnect the battery. Now you can see I'm trying to fix it. So what's the problem?" Upon which he goes ballistic, calling me names "f---ing cheap bastard", "stupid f---", flips the bird, etc.

What happened next was the worst part. I said, "You know, I do have a problem. I want to have a neighbor I can interact with over normal stuff, and count on if there's some kind of an emergency. Can we do something about it?" Jim starts toward me aggressively, begins to take off his jacket, and says "You want to do something about it?" At this point, I stood my ground but maybe got a little overexcited and said "Are you nuts? What are you, a 9 year old, you want to get in a fight? Back off!" He backed off and stormed into his house, swearing and flipping birds the whole way. It sucked.

Now, there are always two sides to a story, and I'm sure he would tell it differently. But I'm the one who's looking for help to understand how to deal with this, and I believe I have represented the situation reasonably. As I said above, I hate the idea that I might be stereotyping Jim as "angry vet". But I have zero experience with this and just don't know how else to interpret it.

Frankly, what's motivated me to try posting to this forum is I'm afraid for my kid. What if she accidentally breaks one of his windows with a baseball? It happens. I fear his reaction.

Thanks for you patience. Please educate me. What am I missing? What should I do?

- trying2understand

How did you find this thread to ask your questions ??

I did a variety of general Google searches using words like "neighbor" and "angry" but, frankly, also "Vietnam veteran". There are other threads in this forum on closely similar issues, even between neighbors, which is why it must have come up.

As I was reading around here, another theme in this forum caught my attention - the notion that *some* "civilians" don't seem to meet *some* veterans' standard of reasonable morals and behavior. This resonated with what I experienced from my neighbor - his ongoing indignation over what I see as expectable interactions and events of daily life.

I did not make myself an expert on the subject first. I was upset today. I was looking for help understanding something. Still am.

Am I in the right place or the wrong place? Are my issues appropriate for discussion here or not? If not, I will remove the post if I can or ask the moderator to do it.

Phony or not, you cannot talk to a person who is unreasonable especially an angry person and expect good things to come from that. One of you has to have the good sense to maintain a normal level of voice and stay reasonable unless there is a physical threat.

I think you must say that you understand that he is angry. Do not make excuses. I think you must say that you are his neighbor trying to live your life in a friendly neighborly way. I think you must avoid the word you as in you did this or you did that. Do not presume that he knows anything about you including what you are doing. (This kind of action is the same as telling him that things are his fault. He probably won't except that.} Then you say, I don't believe that I can communicate very well in this kind of situation. {It puts the lack of communication on yourself whether that is true or not.) I shall try to do things in way that bothers no one. If there is continued attempts to communicate, you simply refuse to communicate except to say that you cannot communicate very well at the moment and maybe later on that might be possible when things change.

I don't know if there is actually a threat to your children. Your children probably need some instructions that keep them away so they don't add to anything. You might check with your other neighbors and see how they handle things and ask if that is why the house is vacant because he ran off someone else who lived there. If he was successful with that kind of thing, then it might be time to let the legal authorites handle matters.

I am sorry for you. I hope that you do not think that all Vietnam veterans are this same way. We do have anger issues, but most of us know when we are over the top and try not to do things that just fuel the fires. A lot of us are somewhat protective of what we call our space. Intrusions into that space is risky. If he is a Vietnam vet and about 60 years old, then he cannot be much of a problem on a physical level. If he is much younger than that, then you probaby do have a phony who is using the hat and stuff as a defense wall to scare people off and keep them at a distance.

There is a truth that what you might need is professional counseling of some kind to help you understand how to better deal with angry people. It won't hurt you to learn things new and it probaby will help you understand better how to deal with things in your own family. Good luck and stay kool.

Bravo39 out

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bravo39a,

What I am about to say is may be true or maybe not about Vietnam veterans. I can't prove it one way or another. I have heard or read somewhere that about 2.5 million veterans served in Vietnam in the 10 years of war and about 6 million people have made some kind of claim that they are or were Vietnam veterans.

That does not mean that there are about 3.5 million Vietnam veteran phonies IMHO. There is some confusion to the answer the question of are you a Vietnam veteran because someone created the term Vietnam era veteran which means that the veteran served during the time of the Vietnam war but did not actually serve in Vietnam.

To add to the confusion, they may have served in Thailand and considered that close enough to count as Vietnam and some of them certainly experienced attacks on their bases. Then there were some who served in Laos and Cambodia and were not officially there as veterans. These places played a huge role in the Vietnam War.

Getting the government to admit to a veterans service is difficult if the operation was classified. It costs time and money to declassify records and so far as I know, no one puts up the money unless there is a darn good reason for doing it. My own unit service history might still be classified if it were not that an Air Force officer had a need to make a computer model of how Vietnam Air Force Bases were defended and requested the unit history be declassified. After that, it was possible to obtain the declassified records and then put that info on the Internet. It was a huge help for veterans who served in the unit.

It remains that there is a problem with Vietnam veteran status resulting in the VA asking veterans to prove that they were in Vietnam when they make a claim for benefits. I recently applied for Service Connection for Diabetes. I was already registered with the Agent Orange program. There is a link between AO and Diabetes. The VA asked me to prove that I actually had boots on the ground in Vietnam exposing me to AO. Fortunately I had some documents in my momentos that were sufficient. What I had was copies of a couple of Article 15's that had base info and other details on it.

I hand carried those to my VARO and my representative took those up to the ratings board. They were very old papers having been moved around a lot over the years and not in good condition but were still readable but probably would not have been something that could be easily copied. In those old days, copies were on very thin paper. They were so thin that the light of a copy machine went right thru the paper so print showed up from both sides of the paper or read darkly from whatever was below the paper on the scanner.

Most Nam vets feel that there are people misrepresenting themselves as veterans for some kind of personal gain and resent it. They are quick to expose such people as wannabes or out right liars. I have not met anybody who wanted someone who was a fraud or a phony to receive benefits. Most of us think that a phony just harms all veterans. A veteran has a right to what they have earned but not something they have not earned.

The attitude towards civilians is a lot more difficult to explain. It would take a long post to deal with even a small part of this. Almost all Vietnam veterans got treated badly when they came home from the war especially if they served in the late 1960's and after. As the war dragged on, the public was to say the least unkind and unfair to returning veterans. This condition of mistreatment has produced a less than friendly approach to civilians who are viewed as uninformed and often unwanted intrusions.

Veterans know that most civilians have no idea of what we have been thru and that most don't even bother to try to learn. It is not possible to fully understand a veteran from the news stories. There is no replacement that I know of for actual experience. You have to have been there and done that. Even wives and family have troubles with understanding. Family members before and after see changes and they want those changes to somehow go back to what things were before. It does not happen that easy. Veterans I have talked to don't understand the changes and cannot explain what they don't understand. I have talked to veterans who simply don't know how to explain things to their family members. The experience defies an explanation and again we get to you have to have been there and done that.

Call sign Bravo39 out

Good post Bravo39. Anger seems prevalent amongst us, and even I am hard pressed to explain it. In my own mind, the civilian population that was so quick to condem our service and dismiss it as valueless coupled with the family members that simply don't give a crap about something that happened so long ago and is not generally looked upon favorably, and at least in my case, a country that still shows apathy for its veterans by the sorry state of the VA claims process, is what I feel creates it.
I have the same suspicions as Flasypoo, it seems like the "Hat Crowd" is often the phony, I would not wear one for anything for some reason.

Thank you for this information. I had no idea about the "phonies". None of the other neighbors I have been able to talk to so far has any more info about Jim. Wonder how I would find out? I'm not going to snoop, but I seem to be the only person who even knows his first name.

Whether he is a phony or not, your input on "angry guys" has been very thought-provoking and helpful. I'd be grateful if anyone else wanted to add their thoughts on this theme.

And let me say plainly: service has my respect.

I can't believe how I screwed up here. I deleted my posts because I didn't know what I was talking about. My apologies.
Respectfully, Flash

Flash, I was trying to talk with Trying to understand about his children. He mentions in his post about not knowing if his children would be harmed if a baseball went thru his neighbors window by accident.

Trying to Understand, that kind of accident of a ball thru a neighbors window should be avoided. While on that subject, when I was young, my dad told me that anything I lost in my neighbors yard was not to be considered mine any more unless my neighbor gave it back. I was not free to just go and get it. My parents let me practice with a plastic bat and ball or a badminton racket. Less chance of some damage. Anything I did with a ball or any thing else that might do damage to my neighbor was done in the proper place where it did not intrude on my neighbor.

I agree with the suggestion that you might talk with someone at a Vet Center for example. Be candid and come to the point with whom you talk to. Maybe you can find someone who would talk to your neighbor who that person might respect. It might be possible to reach some kind of understanding.

Not all relationships have a happy ending. They usually take a lot of work to make it work.
A lot of your troubles are brought on yourself. In your conversation for example about building your wall, you might have mentioned that you were going to have the line determined in some way before you just built your wall. You don't give the guy an excuse to act in a hostile manner if you address his side of the issues before he has to remind you that he does have a side. Instead of talking to the guy, you could have just sent him a letter about building your wall even if he is next door. Keep a copy of the letter. It would have avoided that confrontation. Once your wall is built, you don't have the right to just look over his side of the wall to see what he parked against it or object to the color he paints his side of it. You don't own both sides of that wall even if you did build it and pay for it.

It appears from your words that he actively defends his space. It would be better if you stayed out of it.

You can avoid some problems if you think things thru before you just jump in.

I'm just totally confused on this whole topic?

I thought the wall was a metaphorical wall??

And who is the one with the issues? the neighbor? OP? is the neighbor the vet? or is the OP the vet?

I'm totally confused....

Trying2understand, the person you describe, Jim, could be me. I'm sure that for years that's exactly the impression my neighbors had of me, and they were right. I was a madman. Angry and secluded. My shrink told me that noise interfered with my life, or I took it as such. I felt people were being rude and not respecting me. I can still remember one neighbor saying, "Why do you always come over here so MAD?"

After a lot of years of group therapy and medication, I'm better now. I try to live and let live, but it isn't always easy. Sometimes I find myself having to take a chill pill to avoid a scene with a neighbor tuning a lawn mower or hammering inside their house at night.

On of my docs said, "your neighbor doesn't even know he's being an a**hole to you." The doc was right, most people would not be bothered by the things that get under my skin.

I wish you luck with Jim. Sometimes you can't win. He can't get better until he decides to help himself, and he has to admit he has a problem first.

I don't know what Jim would do, but I always respected my neighbors kids. It wasn't their fault their parents were jerks. If your son broke my window, I'd smile and remember the time I broke old man Costa's window across the street from my house with a boomerang. That window cost a lot for me to get fixed, and I hope I'd treat any kid who did the same, as I would have wanted to be treated.

Welcome here, you're with good people

Bill

Hi, here is another point of view. I have PTSD which is treated. Veterans with PTSD react differently to everything that might be a "trigger" of past experiences. When a "trigger" happens it can and does set off a "abnormal" reaction. Have your kids play away from "Jim's house just for their own safety. I tend to isolate inside my home ( safe place). I am a woman over 50years old and can have unprovoked attacks on people. These attacks are physical and hurt others. My husband and daughter are the social people in the family. PTSD is a very complex disorder. Thanks for caring about a veteran. Sally

PTSD is indeed a very complex disorder. It isn't easy to figure out the various symptoms which may be causing you trouble. The best advice is to seek competent assistance when needed.