Imagine living in a neighborhood with a community center you could reserve to host parties and events. If you took advantage of that room to host an event and decided to bring your TV, would you feel that you had to defend your ownership of the TV or would you refuse to answer anyone who asked who the TV belonged to?

In this story, one man is in this situation. He’s carrying the TV home from the event he hosted when a neighbor stops to asks him who the TV belongs to.

Now, the man is arguing with his wife about how he handled the situation. Keep reading to see if you side with him or his wife.

AITA for not explaining to my suspicious neighbor why I was carrying my 65 inch TV through the neighborhood?

33M.

There is a community center/hall in my neighborhood run by the HOA that residents can rent, which my wife and I rented last Saturday for a Mother’s Day party.

I have a big family with quite a few aunts and cousins with kids. It made sense to rent the hall since we like to do these big get-togethers sometimes.

The hall is about 1/4th of a mile from my house or maybe a little less.

It sounds like a really nice party.

I brought my 65 inch TV to the hall and set it up on a table to display a slideshow of all the moms and their kids which ran throughout the party, which I drove over in my SUV.

Our event went pretty well.

Most people left around 8pm. A few of my cousins and I stayed behind until 9pm to clean up before going home.

I didn’t want to pack the TV back into my car since it was precarious and almost tipped over when I brought it to the hall, so I decided to just carry it home.

A neighbor seemed suspicious of what he was doing.

As I was walking back, I hear a “HEY!” from a door, and I see one of my neighbors. She looked to be in her 50s.

I briefly pause and look at her with the TV held above my head and just say “Hi” back to her.

She asked “who does that TV belong to?”

I was tired from hosting a party all day and even more tired from walking a quarter mile while holding a TV. I was not really in the mood to keep talking to this lady. I didn’t respond to her and kept walking home.

His wife doesn’t think he handled this situation very well.

I could hear her shouting at me and saying she was going to call the police.

I ignored all of it the entire walk back.

I got home and put the TV down. Got changed and had some water before I told my wife what just happened.

My wife told me I was being a jerk (paraphrasing) because I could’ve just humored the lady for one second, and that I probably looked more suspicious than I realized (I’m a dark skinned guy in a not so dark skinned neighborhood, and I’m probably the youngest home owner on the block by at least 10 years, and it was dark outside.)

He’s wondering if he’s right or if his wife is right.

She thinks we’re likely going to have to deal with that neighbor again in the future.

I got into a little argument with my wife about this because I don’t think I owed that lady any sort of explanation and my wife thinks I should’ve just preserved the peace. AITA?

He could’ve just told the lady that the TV is his and he’s carrying it home from an event at the community center, but it’s odd that the neighbor would think he was stealing the TV. I would assume that someone stealing a TV would park right outside the building instead of walking a block down the street. I’d also assume a thief wouldn’t say “hi” in a friendly way when a neighbor tries to get their attention.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person thinks the whole situation is ridiculous.

This person is clearly on his side.

Another person thinks he had no reason to explain what he was doing to the neighbor.

But this person takes the wife’s side.

I think he met the neighborhood problem.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.