Neighbors

I was sitting in my living room today watching Ethan play in the back yard when he came into the house very upset. It seems that he had kicked his new ball over the fence. That happens a lot. We buy a lot of balls. Personally, I think the manufactures of the balls secretly love our family. Well, they love Ethan.

So, that got me thinking about what it is like being our fence neighbors. We have three yards that we share a fence with. Ethan does not discriminate when it comes to kicking balls over the fence. Behind us lives an elderly couple that must automatically scan their back yard for balls whenever they go outside. It never fails, within a few hours of the ball gliding over the fence, it's back in our yard sitting quietly until Ethan decides to kick it over the fence again. On the left of us is our most sociable neighbors. They are the ones that we quiet often harass. It also seems to be the yard that he kicks his favorite balls into. I guess that's a good thing because whenever that happens, you can bet we are knocking on their door begging for them to retrieve it. They are good sports. Ethan has no qualms about what we should do when he knows his ball is sitting in their yard.

Then there are our neighbors on the right. For one, if I didn't see them in the flesh once every three or four months, I would swear no one lived there. They must live on a very different schedule than the other people in the state of Texas. Ethan gets giddy when he does see them because it's such a rare occasion. Sometimes I blink and wonder if it was an illusion. I also wonder what they do all of the time. They are the reason we spend so much money on balls. Because when one of the balls flies over that fence, we kiss it goodbye. Goodbye ball. Well, unless a hurricane is blowing in. Then we get about 20 balls nicely bagged up and thrown back over the fence. All at once....and Ethan is in ball heaven....as we sit in awe at the amount of balls we own. I wonder if they are vampires. Vampires don't go outside, right? I bet they certainly don't go into the back yard.

I have neighbors with a good sense of humor. None of them seem to mind the onslaught of balls littering their back yards. I think it's become part of their every day lives. Just like breathing is.

So what does all of this mean my friends? It means that you too could live on the edge...wondering when the next ball would fly in your yard...if you lived next to a four year old with a mild obsession with balls.