Our house is the corner house to the entrance to our neighborhood. Since living here we have had a couple instances where teenage nuisances have annoyed us. By us I mean both Scott and I, but really me.
About a year ago there were two cars driving through our neighborhood being all loud. The stopped at the entrance, one facing in the neighborhood, the other out, and took turns throwing their glass beer bottles out the window to try to land them in the drainage ditch. Of course they missed, and glass was strewn all over the road for every car to drive over as they later would enter and exit. Lovely. So what do I do? I go out with my pad of paper and pencil and take down the license plate number of the car facing out. (in SC plates are only put on the back of vehicles.) They caught on to what I was doing and drove off... one in and one out. Well, there is only one exit, so I waited in the bushes for the one car that had to go out so I could get their license plate as well. Sure enough, eventually they came out, but not until I had proved what a stubborn hard head I was, waiting in the bushes in my p.j.s armed with a flashlight and a pad of paper and pencil.
After that incident, I got a little leery of people getting the idea that I was the neighborhood hag. I didn't want egg thrown on my house, or plastic forks poked into my grass, so I decided I would no longer confront obnoxious loud teens in that way.
Which brings us to last night. I have always said one of my favorite things about living here was being able to sleep with the windows open so many nights of the year. Last night we had the windows open to give the A.C. a break. At about 2:30 Scott and I were awakened by loud screaming and laughter coming from the neighborhood pool. Now we have posted pool hours, but I have always believed that those pool hours were almost meant to be broken by teens as the secretly took a dip. Isn't that some sort of right of passage? So it wasn't really the trespassing (they don't live in the neighborhood) that bothered me, but the loud shouting and laughing that made me furious. The more it continued I worried about my three year old girl waking up and I was truly ANGRY. I didn't want to confront them, because my thought was, "if they are so disrespectful to make so much noise, they aren't going to listen to me politely ask them to leave." And I didn't want to worry about egg or forks.
So we got the sheriff's dept. number, and called them. They came just as the loud five were getting into their cars to leave. Lights were on, and I am sure that the teens weren't happy. I don't think that they got a trespassing ticket, which is good, but I hope they won't make a habit of that.
Yes, I guess that officially makes me a neighborhood hag. When we lived on Floradora my lovely neighbor Bessie (in her late 80's) would sit on her front porch with a potato gun and shoot it at cars that went by too fast. I guess I learned from the best? :)
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