Originally Posted by
globecanvas
I get it. When we moved in to our current house 20 years ago, I spent the first summer replacing all the windows and re-siding the house. There were a couple of ~8 year old kids who would come over every day. One of them would just talk non-stop, giving me useful advice like "don't fall off that ladder!" and asking me over and over and over about our 69 GTO (long since sold, now). That kid's family was sort of notorious in town for being trouble, and I used to really wonder if the kid's older brothers were like "keep that new guy busy in the front yard while we rip off his stuff out the back door!" I always thought the kid swiped a garden gargoyle that was here when we moved in (not that I cared, we're not the garden gargoyle types) but coincidentally my wife just happened to dig the gargoyle out of the compost heap just last week and I said "wow I thought the neighbor kid stole that 20 years ago."
Actually the kid's older brother was later arrested for breaking into houses, but I don't think they were organized enough to use the little kid as a decoy. Anyway, a few years later the kid's whole family packed up and abandoned their house in the middle of the night and moved to North Carolina to live with some relatives. Which is where you live, right? The chattermouth kid would be almost 30 now but maybe it's the second generation? Wouldn't that be something.
Haha. two doors down from us is a family whose youngest kid is a very frightening delinquent, maybe 18ish now but sometimes he scares his parents so much with his threats of violence that they leave the house (and then call a mutual neighbor to ask him to 'keep an eye on things'- I know, great parents).
When we first moved into our house (which had been a foreclosure) this kid was around 10. Every time he'd see me out front gardening or whatever, he'd come by and strike up a conversation and offer to help me. He knew we'd done some remodeling and one day he asks to see the house.
First thing he says when he steps in the front door is "I LOVE the new floors!" lol just like a 40 year old woman. Then he proceeds to give me a tour of all the places in the house he and his brother damaged when they broke into it over and over when it was abandoned. Lovely.
However the good news is the people across from us with the heroin-dealing son sold their house and moved out yesterday.
Sounds like I live in some kind of bad neighborhood, but I in fact live in Mayberry, one of the 10 safest cities in California. This kind stuff is just "normal" now I think, even in Mayberry.