Editor’s note: The following column is satire.
Local homeowner Ronald Turpin was surprised to learn that his neighbor Chester Patterson isn’t very fond of him after Patterson struck his neighbor without provocation. Patterson was arrested and released on bail.
Turpin was asked to comment on the situation and said, “I really don’t know why he’s so upset with me. I’ve been nothing but kind to him. I’ve been an exemplary neighbor this whole time. I don’t know what I could’ve done differently.”
Patterson has a much different version of the story: “He walked into my house one day while I was showering, and he kicked me out of my bathroom then started destroying the rest of my house and taking things. Then he started beating me with a crowbar. The next day, he came back and told me that I had to move into my basement, cut off my electricity and then released toxic gas that sent me to the hospital for three weeks,” he said.
It should be noted that the crowbar attack only broke three ribs and could’ve been much worse.
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Patterson also derided the media’s coverage of the issue, saying, “This guy has been terrorizing me for years, making me a second-class homeowner in my own residence, and the media only covers it when I try to take back the rooms of my house. Every time he comes in, beats me and takes a room, they’re silent.”
In fairness to the media, this publication included, it should be noted that Patterson, at some level, would deserve this alleged mistreatment, because he has the nerve to live in what he calls “his own house.” As for his claim about toxic gas being used in the house, Turpin responded by saying that he was simply doing his neighbor a favor by conducting a surprise fumigation of the house, a deed any neighbor would appreciate.
The Greenview Homeowners Association has harshly condemned Patterson for his unprovoked violence, releasing a statement that reads, “We unequivocally support Turpin’s right to defend himself. We believe a bombing of Turpin’s land, which Patterson is unfairly occupying, as well as any nearby houses with owners that have ever supported him, even for a moment, is warranted.”
The idea that the Greenview HOA is somehow being unfair to Patterson is unfounded. While it’s true that the association has supported Turpin’s occupation of the property, they’ve also given Patterson multiple suggestions that he move out of his house. Any claims of bias on the part of the media or the homeowners association are purely based on Anti-Turpinism.
Turpin expressed his regret that he would be forced to decimate the property.
“It’s such a shame that I’m going to have to wipe that house off the face of the earth and build my own there. I’m so sad that he’s now forced me to react this way. You may not believe this, but I’d drafted a treaty that would give him his rights back. I was going to present him with it the next day. When I picked a baseball bat as my weapon of choice and went over to his house for the daily beating, I fully expected it to be my last one. But then, while I was in the middle of beating him, he punched me for no reason; I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Patterson appeared in front of the HOA to express his discontent with what he described as “living under an apartheid state subject to the whims of a tyrant hellbent on my destruction.” They responded by calling him a terrorist, promising to increase the number of drones surveilling his house and periodically shooting rockets.
Now is the time to support Turpin against this unprecedented attack. The only moral stance is to support the full destruction of the property and the expulsion of the terrorist occupation.
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Frank Kidd is a 22-year-old mass communication senior from Springfield, Virginia.