Gentle readers: Let it be known I do not condemn random acts of mayhem, vandalism or larceny — petty or grand. However, when a loyal reader gets revenge, let's say I'm not unhappy ...

Heidi met Zac through a roommate-matching service. They met a few times before they moved in together, and they seemed to get along.

"I thought he was kind of dorky and immature but okay," she said.

As it turns out, Zac was significantly less than OK. Heidi said: "He deliberately made my life miserable the whole year I was stuck sharing an apartment with him. When he wasn't at work, he spent his time in front of the TV, yelling at it. It was the same whether he was watching the news or a sitcom or a football game. The loud, idiotic, running commentary every single night nearly turned my brain into jam. I could still hear it through earplugs. I lost a lot of sleep, and there was nothing I could say to get him to stop.

"The worst single thing he did was lock me out of the apartment. I was putting laundry in the washing machine down the hall when he left. I had to call a locksmith to let me back in. I was really struggling with money and this was a serious blow.

"I tried to avoid going home to stay out of his way. I came to powerfully hate this guy, but I was stuck with him for a whole year. At one point he told me I could move out, but as soon as I found a new place, he changed his mind and told me that since he was a lawyer, he'd sue me if I didn't stay and pay my share of the rent for the entire year of our lease. The whole thing was just another head game."

You know the old adage "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? Heidi started saving nails she found in the street, "the bigger and rustier the better," she says. She would place him behind his tires when his car was parked in its space. She did this for weeks. Nothing happened — until the day he was moving out.

She says: "I found out they went flat on the freeway with his car completely loaded up, and only one spare tire, which was underneath all of his stuff.

"I'm not proud of what I did, but I'm not sorry either. It didn't compare to what he did to me. And it made me feel less like a doormat he stepped on for a whole year. I gave him a couple of bad hours and he never figured out it was me. Being who he was, it could have been anyone who knew him.

"The odds that we'll ever cross paths again is extremely low. That's good because if I found out he lived in my town, it would be very tempting to find a way to jack him up again and that isn't me. But he's special.

"By the way, he once confided that he acted the way he did because he wanted a romantic relationship with me. That was never going to happen."

Did a friend deliberately sabotage your relationship? Send your tale, along with your questions, problems and rants to cheryllavinrapp@gmail.com. And check out my e-books, "Dear Cheryl: Advice from Tales from the Front" and "I'll Call You. Not."