After reading my previous post, I decided a little bit of elaboration about the neighbor's son is required. First of all, I completely despise him. I know it's not nice to say that about a child, but since he's now 17 and totally despicable I don't think he counts as a child anymore. (Plus, he puts some sort of dippity-doo stuff in his hair so it always looks slimy and wet, which is probably one of the more lovable of his traits.) His parents are both blind and rely heavily on him to help out. Now in many instances, this would be the making of a strong character; unfortunately, such is not the case here.
For instance: his mother would come outside and call him; he would hide on the side of the house, laughing with his juvenile delinquent wannabe friends because she couldn't see him. The classic episode was when my mother said to him loudly "Your MOTHER is calling you." and he jumped about a foot off the ground because he didn't know she was there, then he went scuttling into his house, little pig of a boy that he is.
My favorite incident involves the battle of the malibu lights. You know what those are, right? The little lights you line your garden pathways and dark driveways with? Well, we have them all throughout our backyard. They are happy little marching rows of black helmeted soldiers, usually. Until the day I noticed something strange was happening … their little hats were being knocked askew.
I went out into the yard to check it out, only to find the bulbs had been neatly plucked, leaving the empty shell and the hat tipping sideways. Thinking it very strange, I decided just to replace them and say nothing about it. I put in five new bulbs and screwed the lids on tightly before going in.
The next day, the hats were off again and the bulbs were missing. A little huffily, I replaced the bulbs again, searching around in the flowerbeds for some sign of the missing bulbs. Ten in two days seemed a bit extreme, and my favorite theory (a raccoon took them) was looking less likely (as if it had ever been likely in the first place!)
I decided to sit up the next night and watch the backyard to see if I could identify the culprit. However, I couldn’t make it. It was too boring and I was way too tired, so I packed it in after about an hour and went to bed. Next day, same thing; bulbs gone, lids off. Now what? My second favorite theory (crazy semi-homeless lady who wanders the neighborhood had developed a fetish for the tiny, but expensive, Malibu light bulbs) was also very improbable. I decided to look at it more logically, and immediately focused my attention on the delinquent next door. He was at the age when disobedience is not just expected, but almost required. Plus, the friends he was hanging out with looked like the type to be doing drugs.
I spent several fruitless nights watching the backyard, but couldn’t catch him at it (I had to go to work, but, since it was summer time, he had no school and could stay up all hours of the night.) Since that seemed like a losing game, I decided to try to scare him. One afternoon, I heard him outside in his yard with two of his skateboarding, punk friends. I grabbed the phone, called the parents (they were away and I was housesitting) and proceeded to make up a little white lie, while speaking very audibly from the back deck, where I could be easily overheard, and was, as I said something like this:
“I just got off the phone with the police. They told me I could install the electric-shock devices in the lights, as well as use the motion-detecting camera as evidence. Yup, since they are coming into our yard they are trespassing so we are allowed to protect ourselves. Oh, and next week the police are coming out to set up those exploding dye packs in the lights so when someone touches it the pack will explode and mark them so we can then have irrefutable evidence and can press charges!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him go into a whispering huddle with his friends then they all took off running. Ever since then we’ve had not a single problem with disappearing Malibu light bulbs.
