"Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn!"
Yeah, I kinda feel like I just said that.
Directly across the street from our house is an asbestos abatement company (not bad neighbors actually, as they don't store anything hazardous on site and mostly operate at hours when we're not home). They keep several big rig trailers on site.
And tonight I heard a bunch of the neighborhood kids playing in the area and series of loud bangs. No big deal; the kids in the neighborhood play around the area all the time. They're kids - that's what they do. For fuck sake, that's what I did growing up - run around the neighborhood making noise, quite often after dark.
The problem this time was that they were making noise by playing on top of one of the trailers.
Now, it's not the noise that was the cause of concern; I had been watching a hockey game, so noise wasn't a big deal. It was the playing on top of the trailer that was concerning. And not so much for the worry that they were going to fall off, but rather that they were going to fall off and then there was going to be a lot more noise and bother from the EMTs showing up to tend to the particular idiot who had inevitably fallen off and cracked their head open or shattered a limb.
So, yeah, I was the grump old bastard who called the cops to get them chased off. The worst part is, if I'm going to be the grumpy old bastard yelling at kids, I should at least be on the porch in a rocking chair, with a shotgun, a bottle of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes. Unfortunately, of those five items, the only two I currently have are the porch and the bottle of whiskey. No rocking chair, don't own a gun, and don't smoke anymore. And I don't see all of those things coming together until I'm at least 80 (at that point, I don't think I'm going to be greatly worried about lung cancer or liver failure.
Then, and only then, will I truly be the grumpy old bastard!
