A Mommy Story

On Friday we decided that cooking was not in the plans for dinner, so I ran out to get dinner. As I pulled into my driveway after getting food, I noticed one of the neighbor boys and his friend acting suspiciously in our yard.

A quick background on the neighbors: they live in the three bedroom, 1200 sq. ft. ranch next to us, and they have two adults, four children, three dogs (one about to have puppies), a cat and a turtle. How they all fit in that place is a mystery to me. The oldest child is 9, and the youngest is 3. They are nice people, although the kids are a little rowdy at times.

The kids are often playing in our yard. I can understand this a little, since our house is located on the bend in the road, so we have a fairly large yard, while they have a postage stamp sized plot of land to play. As long as they are playing nicely and aren’t coming up on our porch, or attacking our tree or shrubs, I try to not let it bother me. (Although we did fence in our backyard not only to contain Cordy, but also to stop them from using our entire backyard for football and baseball games.)

Anyway, back to Friday. This was the second youngest kid, who is 5 or 6, and his friend of the same age. They were moving along our fence slowly, eyes darting back and forth to see who was watching. I made eye contact with the neighbor boy – I gave my “What do you think you’re doing?” look, while he gave the typical young boy “I’m getting into trouble” look with a side glance at me.

I continued to watch them as I slowly gathered up my stuff and got out of the car. And then I noticed one of the boys facing the fence, and his hands were in front of him. Then his pants slid down slightly, and I noticed the fence in front of him getting wet. He was peeing on my fence!

The boy gave a quick glance over his shoulder, knowing I was watching. I was in shock – while I wouldn’t put it past these boys to do something like this, I didn’t expect them to be so bold as to do it with me watching. The boy finished, pulled up his pants, and both of them ran back into their own yard to play. I should also point out that this part of the fence was roughly 4 feet away from the neighbor’s back door, where they could easily find a toilet inside.

I walked in the door, still dumbfounded by what had just happened. “What’s wrong?” Aaron asked.

“The neighbor boy and his friend just peed on our fence!”

“What?”

“They peed on our fence. I watched them do it.”

Aaron put on his shoes and went outside right away. A few minutes later, he came back in.

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them if they needed to use the bathroom, to go into their own house, and not use our fence.”

“And what did they say?”

“They mumbled something about OK, then ran off.”

Somehow, I doubt that will deter them. I’m sure they thought it was hilarious. It made me hope that baby #2 is a girl, because I seriously don’t think I’d know what to do with my son if he peed on someone’s fence. Of course, the answer is my son would never be raised to do that. But boys just seem to be more willing to do stupid stuff like that.

Is there some kind of “hoodlum” gene on the Y chromosome, tempting little boys to pee on fences, pull up flowers, and leave their bikes right behind our cars in our driveway? Some primal urge to mark territory and destory the territory of others?