The Screaming Neighbor

As requested, here is the story of my neighbor yelling at me five years ago.

Jake was 13 and, like most 13 year old boys, did things without a lot of thought. One day, he and a friend were out in the street in front of our house hitting small clumps of dirt with a hockey stick. I'm sure you can already see where this is going. The two of them were pretending that they were Tiger Woods, I guess, and were swinging with all they had. The little dirt clods flew straight and true, right into the cul-de-sac we live on the neck of. Luckily, there were a couple of empty houses and most of their flying debris landed in the driveways.

This may not be an approved, parent-sanctioned activity but since they were only hitting little (the size of small marble) dirt clods, I allowed it to continue... My bad.

Five whole minutes later, my hermit neighbor came out of his house screaming at the two 13 year olds about breaking his truck windshield. I heard the yelling/screaming and ran out to see what was going on. I asked the gentleman, nicely, if he would stop yelling at the boys and talk to me at which point he decided that there should be threats of suing and juvenile delinquency. I asked him to calm down and had the boys go inside, following them within a minute because the man was still yelling.

I went to his house about 20 minutes later to see if we could rationally discuss what had happened and so I could assess any actual damage, which had magically cured itself before I got there. He pointed out a small crack on the side of his windshield and I mentioned that I'd seen him out inspecting his window the previous week and had seen that crack then. Again with the yelling. He told me he was going to call the police and I asked him to do it, since they would calm him down and I wouldn't be risking bodily harm, and neither would he....

He never did call the police, he never said another word about the windshield, and he never smiled at me again. I never let the kids hit ANYTHING with a hockey stick, baseball bat or golf club in our neighborhood again. They can cause plenty of damage with Frisbees, footballs and soccer balls.