Miss Gulch of the Neighborhood

(Warning: The following post may contain some disappointing information.)

I didn't mention this before for a couple of reasons and mostly because I figured it was a one time thing, a fluke, if you will. Early on Christmas eve, I stepped out of the little side door of the garage to sneak an evil cigarette to inspect the garbage cans and was standing there by the gate in my red and green flannel pajamas. I could hear several little boys chatting away and it seemed like they were playing with Toby, the neighbors' cat. One of them yelled, "It got away!" I figured he was gonna run right under my gate to get away from the kids and he did. Well, through the wooden slats I could see a figure approaching and then MY GATE LATCH WAS CLICKED OPEN! I was in shock and without thinking I said, "What are you doing?" in my best imitation of the disgruntled apple tree from The Wizard of Oz. The boy screamed and ran and was saying to his co-horts, "Did you hear that?" Then another voice was saying "Do it AGAIN!" I then can make out the shape of this ballsy kid walking right back up to my gate. I said, in my regular voice, "Don't open that gate!" Same response. Now I was severely irritated and walked back into the garage. We have windows on our garage door and I walked up and saw this kid making his THIRD APPROACH! I banged on the glass, pointed at his face and yelled, "GET OUT OF MY YARD!" I was extremely irritated because my backyard is my sanctuary of outdoor privacy. I couldn't believe the gall of these kids to invade my personal space. I then decided to forget about it because it was Christmas eve.

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Today the dog next door was barking his eyeballs out and I was wondering what he was so fired up about. He finally stopped barking and a short while later I decided to go out the back door to, uhm, get something from the deck and I stopped short just outside my door because I could hear these little boys being all snicketty gibbets nearby. I could tell they were by the neighbors' fence. Our houses in this neighborhood are stepped on different levels. The people with the cat are downhill, and the ones with the dog are uphill. We don't have a fence on the uphill side and the neighbor's fence doesn't start until a way back. So there was nothing between me and these kids but air. I thought I would just go back in the house and then, THEN they jumped down into my yard into my planter box of bamboo! I peeked around the bush by my patio that I was sort of hiding behind and all I could see were shoes and socks at the bottom of the bamboo. I had now reached my boiling point and stepped out and yelled, "What are you doing?!?"

For some reason I imagined I was scary, but then realized I was wearing grey sweats, a Michigan J. Frog T-shirt and had bed hair. One of the kids said, "Hiding." I said, "Well, you're hiding in MY bamboo in MY backyard! My yard is private! Go hide in your own backyard!" All I saw was shoes and socks flying out of the bamboo. I tried to call my neighbor because I had told her about the Christmas eve thing and she knew who the kids were, but she wasn't home. I then called the house that I thought she had said was their house and talked to the dad, but I had the wrong house. He did say he had a little boy that ran around with all the other little boys on the street and would talk to him. Sheesh! I've lived here for 6 1/2 years and never had kids in my backyard before. What's that all about?