Shenanigans in the Hood

I’m living in a new neighborhood now and a new neighborhood means new problems. In our old place, we shared a wall with our neighbors and came across problems like hearing them party into the late hours of the night. In our new place, we don’t share any walls, but we do share a street. Our street is technically a circle and on this circle there are children: a lot of children.

Within hours of moving in, we met two neighborhood kids. Each day since then I’ve met at least one more. They range in age from 4 to about 12…or however old you are in sixth grade. These kids are the most forward bunch I’ve ever met. They routinely knock on our door just to ask us simple questions like “whatcha doin’?” or “what time is it?” or to express other pressing concerns. When I was their age (says 80 year old Kate), you couldn’t force me to talk to anyone other than my sister or my exclusive neighborhood set of friends, and you certainly wouldn’t have been able to get me to approach the new college-age neighbors. But that’s not the case with my new neighborhood hooligans. Apparently these kids used to be friends with the college guys who lived in our house before us, so they feel like that grandfathers them in to befriending us. Since they see so many college kids come and go in our specific house, it seems as if they feel a sense of ownership over our house because they’ve grown up with the place and we’ve only been here a week or so. I’d equate it to a child growing up with a single mother and watching her reel through boyfriends. But enough psychoanalysis, on to story time:

The other day I was moving the last bit of stuff from our old place to the new one. When I pulled around the corner to enter our circle, a brigade of children came out of the bushes, out from behind cars, off of roofs, and materialized out of thin air in order to greet me. It was both terrifying and oddly flattering. The leader of the pack, a little sixth grader named Caelen, was waving frantically at me and shouting “HI KATE!” before I could even get out of my truck. Then, once I exited my vehicle, Caelen summoned the others and called “Let’s do it! Now! C’mon!” I was fairly certain the “it” they were going to do was kill me. I imagined them as the Lilliputians and me as the giant about to be tied down to the ground with ropes and strings and painful things. But then, only slightly to my relief, they instead formed a barricade at my front door in order to prevent me from entering my house. I bantered with them for a minute or two before declaring game over and asking them to knock on my door for me, as my hands were full of boxes. Unfortunately, my two roommates inside didn’t answer. Turns out they were screening knocks because these kids had been banging on the door all day. After a few more tiny-fisted knocks, Alison, my roommate, answered the door. We hurriedly attempted to unload my truck as Wendy, my other roommate, (who was called out by one of the neighbor kids for hiding inside) distracted the children at the door. Us three semi-grownups then created a barricade of our own in the doorframe as to prevent any wiggly bodies from wriggling their way inside. Eventually we told them it was dinnertime and securely locked ourselves in the house while the young voices slowly drifted off in the distance.

This was only one of many, many neighborhood shenanigans. I’m sure there will be more stories to come with these bold hooligans. For now, I’m just going to sit inside my dead-bolted home and make as little noise as possible.