What the HELL did I ever do to you?

[shazrasha]

Firstly I'd like to apologise for spamming my flist the past few days. I've had a lot to say.

Secondly I want to ask if any of you ever did anything as children that you in later life realised how badly people must have felt about it when you did it?

I refer to my previous entry for info on what happened yesterday. I personally thought the matter was over but apparently not. The kids did eventually run away when they, as far as we can tell, threw something at our side window a little harder than they intended. Again I thought the matter over.

I came home today at lunch to get some stuff and things were fine then. But then I came home after work to see that some flower (not sure where they had gotten it from) was strewn down the side of my house and that someone, presumably the kids from yesterday had attempted to fill in my yale lock with the petals. Not only that but they had also shoved a huge pile of plums though the letter box.

Two things go through my mind. Just what the HELL do they think they are doing? All I ever did to them was stare little sternly. I didn't even tell them off. The second is that just once I'd like one of them to really, really think what it would feel like to come home to find that someone had done something like that to their place.

EDIT:choccoweeble did what I had not yet done and went out to ask that they stop. The boy next door looked at her a little nervously and said ok. It lasted 5 minutes. So I went into the kitchen and went out the back door. Randomly I managed this without alerting the two girls who had started throwing again. So I gave them the fright of their life by bursting out the back gate. Slight hurdle gave them the chance to get away but my intent was not to catch them. They were giggling at me so I grinned and slapped my hands together with a rather elated "Right then". I then purposefully walked to the front of the neighbours house and rang the doorbell. Smiling I apologised for bothering them and explained what they were doing and that we had asked them to stop.

That seems to have done the trick as they stopped. A while later after scratching at the side of the house there was eventually a knock at the door. I opened it to find four kids in varying degrees of guilt as they apologised. I said "that's ok, I'd have preferred if you'd stopped when we'd asked but that's ok." They imediately identified the ringleader in who they looked at, at my comment. I was not surprised. I can relax now, they'd be insane to try anything now as they know the results and it's not like I don't know who they are. ;)
As choccoweeble rightly said, parents are a very scary thing.

Comments

[fishwithfeet.livejournal.com]

The only think I can think that I did was tell a woman (who was an animal rights activist) that I couldn't wait to do the dissections in school after she had expounded upon how proud she was of another girl who was lobbying for virtual dissections in the classroom... But really that's the only thing. I was raised to be polite to other people, and respect my neighbor's property.

I honestly think it's the mindset today that children should not be disciplined, and that parents need to be 'best friends' with their children. My mother is a grade school teacher and she sees this kind of thing all the time. It's unfortunate really...

[shazrasha.livejournal.com]

I was also raised polite even if choccoweeble thinks I'm not always successful :P

We did get them to stop in the end with hard core tactics. See above ;)

[fishwithfeet.livejournal.com]

Bravo, excellent tactics. I heartily support use of them XD