Neighbors With Teenagers

Rule #42 is to always be nice to teenagers in the hopes that they won't select your house for mischief. If you live in my neighborhood you know just how crazy that mischief can be....stealing cars for joy rides, jumping off of roofs onto trampolines, torturing small animals, and basically just emo'ing all over.

For the most part I follow this rule religiously...teenagers scare me a bit...but recently this rule has become less abstract as my neighbor's kid has actually become a teenager. Applied rules are always challenging.

I seem to have drawn the short straw as I am now living next to the guy who I wish was my Dad when I was a teenager. Yes, the Dad who had absolutely no rules and was too busy dating his own teenagers to pay any attention to what his kid and kid's friends were up to. The Dad who said "yeah, yeah I'll be home "supervising" send your kid over."

Turns out the Teenagers (some barely 13) are alone in the house, and sneak out (sneaking being relative) in the middle of the night to congregate down in the marsh to shoot at each other with their annoying pellet guns. 

I've made an effort to politely ask that they refrain from shooting my dog and/or cats, but I cannot be sure they are not using other poor animals as target practice....they do seem particularly fond of shooting birds, squirrels, chickens, and the random poor whistle pig. I'm just happy they have terrible aim and seem to hit each other more than anything else...I've seen the wounds.