Sandra liked to see out her lounge window, but detested sheers. The window looked directly into her neighbour’s lounge window.
So Sandra hung drapes. Not that the neighbour was a Peeping Tom, but supposing Sandra wanted to go to the toilet just at the same moment the neighbour was getting out his ironing board, and accidently looked up and saw her leaving the lounge. “Sandra’s leaving the lounge to go to the toilet again”, the neighbour would think.
So, the curtains cost two hundred and forty-seven dollars and twenty-seven cents – or whatever, let’s not argue about the price. And there was an extra fifty-five dollars for having them put up. What a difference they made aesthetically! The trouble was, Sandra liked to look out. The other trouble was, the neighbour liked to look in. The curtains afforded no privacy whatsoever.
One day the neighbour was getting out his ironing board just as Sandra stood up to leave the lounge to go to the toilet. Sandra thought, “He’s getting out his ironing board again”. And her neighbour thought, “Goodness! Sandra’s leaving the lounge to go to the toilet again”.
Sandra had no idea why her neighbour needed to do so much ironing. Conversely, the neighbour had no idea why Sandra needed to go to the toilet so often.
After a few month’s of this it became an obsession, both for Sandra and the neighbour. To cut a fairly long story mercifully short, Sandra fired a gun through both windows intending to murder the neighbour, and the gun didn’t go off.
Not a pane of glass was broken. No one gives a jolly hoot about Sandra and the neighbour. So now we can all live happily ever after. If the writer of this story had shown more nous and had the neighbour murdered, then there could possibly have been a story worth reading. But oh no! The writer had to hold a mirror up to life. Usually, nothing much happens in real life. Truth is NOT stranger than fiction. And so, the mirror shall be smashed. The curtains shall be closed.