Kids these days – they got no respect.

Boy, do I feel like an old man saying this over and over again, but it really bugs me … apparently just not enough to actually go out and say something to them about it.

You see, my neighbor’s kids play in our backyard like it was their own. They can’t play in their own yard because it’s a lot smaller than ours, and also, they have a trampoline which takes up the most of it. Totally not my problem – just trying to get “the facts” out of the way first.

What pisses me off is that not for nothing, but we don’t even know them. It’s not like I’ve chatted with them at the mailbox or even waved goodbye when pulling out of the driveway. We don’t even know their names, and yet their kids think its ok to play in a complete and total stranger’s yard.

Now do I blame the parents or do I blame the kids??? Well, fuck – I blame all of them … the kids for not knowing better than to run around someone else’s yard without permission, and their parents for not teaching them that it’s fucking rude. And we’re not just talking the occasional running to get a ball that rolled into the yard – we’re talking tackle football, almost exclusively in my yard kind of playing. They’ll even come right up to the house and chase each other across the covered patio off the back, which is both startling and creepy in its own right.

They’ve also been known to leave balls and whatnot behind after they’re done, by the way.

I guess I just don’t get it because believe it or not, I actually did “play outside” when I was a kid – a lot – and even after we got the Nintendo and I got addicted to that. Me and the other neighborhood kids would run around from dawn til dusk, but we certainly didn’t play in the yards of people who we didn’t know … or didn’t even have kids, for that matter! Maybe we might cut through a yard of another kid who had already gone to bed, but even that was asking to get yelled at. People deserve their privacy, not to hear kids running back and forth across the lawn, yelling and screaming while they’re trying to watch TV.

I don’t know – maybe the blame is on me because I’ve not once stuck my head out the door and said, “Go play in your own goddamn backyard!” I still reserve that I shouldn’t have to, but then again, that just leaves me pissed off on a night like tonight when I can hear them tackling each other out there from the other end of the house and I know damn well that their parents won’t say anything because they clearly don’t think that they’re even doing anything wrong.

Why can’t people just have manners these days so that I don’t have to feel socially awkward about my own property?