I found a golf ball in my yard this morning. A few weeks ago, we found some plexiglass balls from some sort of chandelier-lamp in our yard. One of the dogs was chewing on them.

We don’t play golf, and we wouldn’t have a tacky chandelier-lamp in our home.

We do, however, have a fenced-in yard to keep our 11 dogs safely in the yard. In one section, the fence is 6 feet high and across the driveway from another fence, which is 5 feet high.

I’ve always hated fences. I think they’re ugly and they make me feel confined and restricted. And separate. But when I first moved here (and my house didn’t have a fence), I was forced to put a fence around my property, not to keep my dogs in. I didn’t have any dogs at the time. It was to keep the neighbor’s kid from coming over and taking stuff. She was small and she could fit through the gap between the sliding glass door and the door frame. And she’d take stuff. I’m not into stuff, but the person I was with at the time, had stuff he didn’t want taken.

Before the fences went up, I went over to talk to the grandmother about this problem. She told me I should hit the kid to make her stop. I nearly keeled over! I never even hit my own child. There was no way I could do it to someone else’s. So the fence went up. Island people would say, “Good fences make good neighbors”. I hated doing it, though.

As time went by, the neighbors had more kids. Boys now. Dogs came into my life, too, and I moved into the house I’m in now. It had a fence around most of it. But the neighbors would let their boys come close to the fence and harass the dogs. The kids would throw sticks and rocks at the dogs through the fence. The parents would do nothing. They don’t like dogs. So I had to shell out a bunch more cash to build more fences to keep these kids away from my dogs.

But now, the boys are old enough that they can throw farther. So they throw all sorts of things into my yard at the dogs. A few weeks back, when Michael showed the mother the plexiglass balls we’d found in our yard, she beat the kid. Today I found a golf ball in the yard. Apparently the beating didn’t work.

Why can’t people teach their kids right from wrong in a way that will make them behave like civilized people?

Michael spent a lot of time over the holidays getting a basketball hoop for the kids to play with. Their ball is flat now. I asked the kid about it yesterday and he said it hit the top of the fence and popped. So they have to start harassing the dogs again. I’m thinking of offering to take the kids to after school camp or boyscouts or something so they have a positive outlet for their energy.

But that would take more of my time and energy and more money probably. These parents work so much to make ends meet (keep a brand new car in the driveway and the hair and nails done, too, oh, while the house continues to fall apart), that they don’t have quality time with their kids. I’m at a loss…..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 11:11 am and is filed under Rants, St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.