Somebody in My Neighborhood Hates Me

It was a sunny day last spring when I realized that the passenger-side door of my car had been keyed - one jagged, wandering line slicing through the bright blue paint. At the time, I was still living in my original Cleveland apartment, which came with a driveway parking spot - so, yes, my car was keyed while sitting in the driveway. Still, I wrote it off as teen vandals; I lived on the edge of a local park, not super populated, so I figured someone could've keyed me on the go & just disappeared into the dark. Jerks.

A couple months later, I'd moved into my second Cleveland apartment, which was in the same building as the first one but didn't come with parking privileges. While parked on the street just in front of my building, my car was keyed again; this time, it was the driver's side door, the same jagged, wandering line cutting a matching scar across the other side of the car. Who the hell was doing this? Was it just bad luck, or was I on the receiving end of someone's personal ire? I barely knew anyone in town!

Neither of the next two incidents were as serious or lasting as being keyed, but they were definitely weirder.

Once, my car was covered in mud & hay. It wasn't a job well done - farm materials just sort of tossed everywhere - but the weather than day meant that the mud was pretty seriously caked on. I scraped it off as best I could, then hit up a drive-through car wash to take care of the rest.

Another time, I walked out to find my car covered in... melted candy. Someone had tosses chocolates & gummy candy on it - again, haphazardly - & the hot sun had done a number on them, again caking my car is strange substance.

Who was doing this to me, & why?!

I will admit that, at first, I thought it was one specific person, someone who never liked me (& vice versa), but that individual soon moved out of the area - & a few of the incidents happened after that. Like I said, I barely know anyone in the neighborhood, so I didn't know who could be targeting me personally. If it was someone carrying out a personal vendetta, they were doing a pretty good job of not cluing me into it, because I had (still have!) no idea who it could be.

I'd nearly forgotten about these incidents, & then another one happened just last week, before I moved. It had been awhile since anything strange had done down, & then Monday morning, I walked out to my car to find that it had been egged. Egged! In 2017! What am I, 15? Luckily, the perpetrator only hit my driver's side window, & though the yolk dribbled down the body of the car, there was no real damage done (aside from my having to do some serious scrubbing to be able to see out my window again!)

As of this week, I've moved into a new place in a new part of town, & I have high hopes that all my car vandalism issues are a thing of the past - that they were all related to parking on a dark corner next to a wide open space, not to someone having it out for me, personally. I don't know how much more my poor car can take!