Kids. Of the Bus Stop Variety.

Our house is the neighborhood bus stop.  Well, that changes soon thanks to one particular darling on the 8-9am bus.  Imagine, if you will, waking up to the sounds of children laughing and playing.  That sounds almost nice, right?  I bet you were thinking of children in the 4-7 year old range, weren't you?  Now, imagine waking up to near teenagers screeching and running around on your front porch as they are no doubt somehow flirting amongst themselves.  Now you're at my bus stop.

Let me start by saying how torn I am about feeling so bitter towards this situation.  I greatly do not want to become "cranky old hag lady" yelling at the neighbors' kids for being on my lawn.  However, I really DO NOT like the idea of my poor malnurished (there are lots of trees in the yard, so sunlight is very scarce to the grass) lawn being further trampled by older kids emo-ing on it.  And, no, that's not a real word, but I bet you get the picture -walking through the yard itself, dragging their feet, planting in one spot (next to my tree) and listening to music until another kid arrives.  Smaller children might be cute, playing tag or something, but these hormone-driven tweens/teens just make me want to hose them off.  I silently decided to say nothing about them being in our yard - littering, yelling, and trampling, but one kid went too far. 

Day #1 of inappropriateness: Jon and I are in bed for a few more minutes before we have to get up and get moving for our day.  The dogs are laying down on the floor.  Suddenly, a child is heard talking into our bedroom window (the child must be on our front porch to do this), which causes our dogs to start barking.  Upon hearing the dogs reply, the child decides to yell more into the window to stir them up more.  The bus shows up and the child escapes without Jon nor I being able to get appropriately dressed to go yell at children.  Drats.  So, I called in a complaint.  They'll talk to people, blah blah blah.  Whatever.  I figured this would continue to happen, so I decided to let it escalate naturally.  This was somewhere between a week and a month ago.

Day #2: Jon and I are in bed, dogs on floor and we suddenly hear music playing into our window.  Luckily, the dogs must be used to us messing with our phones because it didn't even phase them.  I jumped up and began to get appropriately dressed for child yelling and had a moment of guilt that maybe a kid wasn't on our porch and it was just a loud stereo going down the street.  Then Jon informed me that he heard the iPod/phone actually rub the window screen when I had left the room to get my coat.  Oh, okay -guilt gone.  This time, the bus doesn't come so quickly.  Jon goes outside to smoke on the front porch and notices one kid in particular is about in the middle of the street trying to be as far away as possible from our porch.  Right as the bus pulls up, I step outside and consider talking to the bus driver.  Before I fully decided against it, the driver shuts the door and takes off.  I call the school again.  This time, she mentions something about getting the bus stop moved.  ........Ummm....YES PLEASE.  Didn't even know that was an option!  She swears up and down that that will happen, but it won't happen right away, blah blah blah.  Okay, cool.  This was somewhere in the past week.

Day #3:  The kids seemed louder than usual, but everytime I looked out the window, I didn't see anyone.  The dogs barked a few times, so I put them in the laundry room to really focus on what was going on.  I got completely dressed and in the process heard very loud talking that must have been coming from my porch.  Jon had gotten in the shower by this point.  I looked out the window and saw precious darling boy at the other end of my porch, but on my porch none-the-less.  So, in my fully dressed glory, I stomped to my front door, threw it open and told the kid to get off my porch.  No please, no other words, just straight to the point.  This kid had no coat on, so his arms were tucked into his t-shirt and he was on his phone somehow.  He looked at me like I kicked his puppy, slowly gathered his things, and stumbled on a plastic planter getting off the porch.  I stared at him until he was all the way off, then went back inside and called the school once again.  The bus stop will be different (Although they don't know where yet...boo hoo...I should feel really badly about that, shouldn't I?) beginning next year.  And this was today.

And I keep thinking about what I will do if this happens again.  Or what I should have done.  I think other groups of kids use this bus stop at earlier times in the day, but we haven't really heard them or had any problems with them.  But this stop - this terror child is obviously a problem and then a girl always stands and walks in the middle of our yard.  By walks, I mean all the way through our yard, instead of using the street close to the curb.  Or even the grass close to the curb.  I figured I was just being crazy "doesn't have kids" lady, but I had a mom of 3 tell me how horrible that all sounded and that she would call the police if it were her.  My main thing is that I don't like the potential for an accident on my property.  What if this dumb kid had tripped on my planter and cracked his head open?  Would I be seeing a lawsuit?  And would they win????  That's the main thing running through my head.  What a crazy world nowadays.

Good riddance, annoying bus stop.