If that ball lands in my yard again I'm keeping it - you'll get arrested

I must have had a great Old-Man Neighbor.

He'd always throw the ball back. We'd knock on his door, and he'd go get it. If he wasn't home, we knew the ball would be back in my yard the next day. No big deal. We trusted him.

And sometimes, if Mr. Martinez was working in his yard when I pulled one into the "left field stands," he'd come over and pitch to us as the "all-time pitcher" or if it was football, the "all-time QB."

Good dude.

Screw Granny. It's not hard to be nice.

 

Are you serious? It's a fucking ball going over a fence. It happens. Since when is that being "delinquent"?

 

C'mon bubs, everyone knows football is a gateway to the harder stuff. They start with footballs, but it's only a matter of time before they start lobbing Molotov cocktails.

 

When I was 18, I was playing baseball with my cousins, using a tennis ball. There was one yard that was fairly distant that we would reach one or two times a game (no fence).

One time, I hit a ball that bounced multiple times into the yard. Old man comes out and takes the ball and tells us he's going to keep it. I told him that if he did, I would call the cops, because it's stealing. I, being a self-rightous 18-year-old know-it-all, told him that I worked and paid taxes, so he should show me respect too. The guy gave me back the ball.

Seriously, unless there's damage (or potential of other than a little trampled grass), just give them back the ball. If a kid walks on my yard for a few seconds to fetch their ball, I could care less.

Now, if people use my yard for their dog's bathroom ....

 

Good point about Halloween. She'd better start stocking up on Windex, 'cause I have a feeling her windows are destined to have some close encounters with eggs and soap.

Not that I would know anything at all about eggs, soap, windows and Halloween or Devils Night.

On the flip side of the coin, when I was growing up, my yard was one of those no-mans-land yards where you were not permitted to go unless you were invited. My mother was always very proud of her flower gardens and defended them like a lioness with her cubs. If a ball came on the lawn, one was expected to go up and knock or ring and ask for the ball back, and she would either give permission to enter the yard to get the ball, or she would get it herself. No problem; she wasn't vindictive, just protective of what was hers. It was understood by all, or so we thought until this one neighbourhood tough deliberately kicked a soccer ball through the flowers and onto the lawn just so he could walk through and retrieve it.

I was about 10 and this guy was about 18 or so, and I was alone on the front steps. No way I was gonna tell him he couldn't go on the lawn. Well, mother, whose sixth sense about such things never failed her, came flying out the door. That's when Mr. Toughie made his second mistake - he fancied himself a martial artist, and he struck a pose. I think there are probably still pieces of him embedded in the earth where he fell under her relentless barrage of fists and feet. Dumbass. And nobody called the cops, either.

 

Unavailable for comment

 

Bump:

The old bat has filed a lawsuit against the kid's parents claiming emotional distress.

 

Gee, I guess I'll sue the owners of my house across the street. They've essentially abandoned their house (no one's lived in it for years, but someone comes by once or twice a year), and they've left a 30-year-old rusting truck in their driveway. I'm emotionally distressed!!

And I hope the judge tells the old lady to suck it up a little.

 

Wow. I wonder what her quality of life is like. A happy person doesn't do things like this.

I feel sorry for her and sorry for the family for dealing with this.

 

We had an elderly couple next door when I was growing up that reminds me of this lady. They were griping about everything, including balls over the fence that we would retrieve. They were just nasty people that we tried to be nice to, and every now and then they would be OK. We'd invite them to our house when we had the big Christmas gatherings and such. They just didn't seem to have any friends, and we tried to answer their grumpiness with kindness. Sometimes it worked.

Around 1985, the husband died. My parents were on a cruise at the time and weren't there for the funeral. I went to the funeral home on my way to work that night and suddenly began to realize the price these folks paid for their ways. There was really no one there at the funeral. I was asked to come back the next day for the burial mass and be a pall bearer. In the end, the widow had practically no one except my family to help her with her needs. When she fell and broke her hip, my mom practically became her in-home nurse.

And going inside that house turned out to be a total trip. The woman (and her husband before he died) was what is known as a hoarder. Never threw out anything. There was practically nowhere to sit. Stuff was stacked up and there were just paths wide enough to get through. Never saw anything like it in my life. Some people just live and think differently than most of us.

 

I'm trying to figure out how anyone could defend this woman and criticize the kids or the parents. For crying out loud, we're talking about a football or baseball landing in someone else's yard. The kids were not doing it on purpose (we were scared of the 80-year-old witch who lived next door and would take pains to avoid the ball landing in her yard).

Granny needs to give the ball back and quit being a crank. End of story.

 

In a Faulkner novel, a little gasoline and a match would bring all the neighbors in line in short order.