The Boys Next Door

Brett and I have an ongoing tussle with four boys who live next door. They are in high-school and college, don't seem to have a dad, and their mom is "a cool mom" so she just lets them be obnoxious and presumably stays on the other side of the house so she can play the fool. Our bedroom is right outside of their driveway which has a hot tub and a basketball hoop, so the boys invite friends over to play ball and bob in the bubbles which sounds fairly wholesome, but they seem to only do it between the hours of 12 and 4am.
Now between you and me, I don't really mind it. Sure their childish shrieks of wonder and enjoyment will wake me up on occasion, but it kind of makes me laugh. You can hear them calling each other names and giggling while they play. What fun fun can be! But then there's Brett. He values his sleep as much as the virtuous traits of others and is incensed by the indulgent ignorance of these particular boys. 

During a midnight basketball game, Brett stepped out onto the landing and yelled, "Hey guys!" The chatter stopped, the ball quit bouncing, the music dimmed. And in the silence Brett said, "Knock it off. I'm trying to sleep." This halted the fun for the night. I guess all the boys scuttled inside to hide from the grumpy old neighbor. 

The party schedule lines up with Spring Break, Summer, and Winter Break, so there is not year-round obnoxiousness. Most parties are met with no interference from the skinny couple next door. (That's us.) We don't usually say anything at all, though I got real huffy on the third occasion of finding broken glass near our fire pit. They throw beer cans and wine bottles into our yard which I now simply pick up and heave back over the fence. Come to think of it, that hasn't happened in a while. Maybe Cool Mom finally noticed all the trash in her yard. There are so many boys at this house at any given time that we don't know which ones live there. They all look the same; 5'10" with long, skinny torsos and puffy brown hair. So there is no finding the leader and negotiating a peace deal.

During a 3am Hot Tub party with music so loud it was like being at the concert, Brett again stepped out onto the landing in his underwear and yelled at the kids. They said, "Yes Sir. Sorry Sir" the way polite kids might, but not 15 minutes later they, and the music were screaming again. This time Brett walked into the yard and climbed up the fence so that his head appeared next to their hot tub and he had a brief conversation that curbed the fun to a 3 out of 10. Compromise. 

I'm usually laying in bed cringing. Not only is Brett always participating in these confrontations in his underwear, but he's not very gracious about it. It irks me every time because it is not the Brett I know. Also, in my mind I'm a cute twenty year-old college girl that lives next door and they're going to think my boyfriend is totally lame. I don't know why I think this, except for the idea that you don't ever feel much older than twenty so sometimes you forget that actual twenty year olds think you're fifty. I have no desire to even talk to these baby-boys, so I genuinely don't understand my desire to be perceived as cool from a distance. 

But then things changed. 

Early one morning, post party, I saw one of the boys' friends walk to his car and take out a tied-off bag of trash and an empty beer box, and throw them into the bushes on the property line of our precious 96 year old neighbor's house. Oh hellll nah! I thought to myself.

"Brett!" I shrieked from my office chair while I stared out the window at the perpetrator, "Wanna go yell at a boy that just threw his trash in Mrs. Cassandra's yard?" Before he even answered me I heard chaos erupt in the kitchen. Brett had been making a breakfast concoction on the stove, and suddenly I heard a thunk and a clink and Brett taking hasty steps. 

"Yeah!" he yelled as he turned on the faucet. "What happened?"

"He threw a garbage bag and a beer box over where you're always picking up litter." I heard silverware bang into a glass. 

"Ahh!" he growled, "Is he still there?" Brett screeched to a halt behind me, scanning the scene through the window.

"Yeah! He's sitting in his car. Go get him, Bubba!" Brett rushed out the door.

I was enlivened by the confrontation. Justice would be served. I watched Brett march across the street and I opened my window to listen. It occurred to me that Brett really trusts me because he didn't see anything happen and the trash was not visible in the bushes. What if I had made it all up and sent Brett out to pick a fight with a young boy for no reason. I doubled checked that I saw what I saw. Satisfied with my conviction, I settled back in my chair to watch. Brett knocked on the driver's side window. It occurred to me that the boy could be combative. What if they get into a physical brawl?

The car door popped open.

Then I heard a pot boil over on the stove. "Rahh!" I grumbled as I scurried off to the kitchen. I took the lid off, turned the flame down and set the sticky lid in the sink. I ran back to my office window only to find Brett headed this way and the boy rooting around in the bushes. 

"What happened!" I shrieked with unexpected feelings of elation. 

It was short and sweet. After failing to get a confession, Brett growled at him to "pick up your s***" which promptly hustled the kid into the bushes.

Brett went back to his breakfast concoction and a few minutes later I heard him giggle.

"Whats funny?"

"I think I overreacted."

But this is when the shift happened. As Brett described the terror on the boy's face, I realized that we are actual adults, power-wielding elders of the young-person community. Brett barely said a dozen words and had that guy rectifying his ways in seconds. I realized we are wrought with power. Young people think we're old and know stuff. They think we're in charge of them! This is a genuine revelation I'm having here.

I suppose people who have kids know this already. They get to boss little people around and intimidate their tiny friends on a weekly basis. Parents instantly become authority figures, not just of their own kids but of all who are younger than they are. There is no second guessing whether or not to straighten out a bad seed. It's part of the job description. 

Kids think I'm an adult, as in, I can pretty much make them do anything I want! It's got me wanting to be the one on our landing at 3am demanding a truce, although I don't know if I have the courage to do it yet. Parents gets to start off easy with babies and build their authority up to teenagers and young people. Entry to executive level dominion. I reckon I should start small - start hanging around jungle gyms at the park... like a pervert. A power pervert.

It's all got me a little excited for the boys' next party.