Just a few minutes ago, a couple of teens took an off-road motorcycle into the little park that’s situated in the middle of the neighborhood. They were starting it, revving the engine, popping it, then shutting it down, then revving the engine, jerking forward a few feet, etc. Just making a huge amount of noise and tearing up the grass. I poked my head up over the back fence and yelled at them to cut it out and take the motorcycle somewhere else.
On the one hand, I’m literally the old guy yelling at teenagers to get off the lawn and quiet down. On the other hand, it’s the middle of the day and I WFH, and we pay a good amount to the groundskeeper folks to maintain that park.
I get it, certainly, but it’s also a symptom of wanting everyone to live in a city setting, shared resources are going to get abused by the usual offenders, a.k.a. kids being kids. Just get drunk and seethe about their shitty parents.
I can contribute to this thread. I refrained from yelling, barely, last summer when we had some younger boys skateboarding in an area along the sidewalk and street last year. Everyone parks their overflow cars on one side of the street. There was a two car area with nobody there so they used that to curb jump back and forth and would go into the street, which is the access road for about 35-40 townhomes.
I glared at them several times over several days then would come inside and yell to my wife how much it bothered me and she, thankfully, talked me down each time. Someone must have eventually said something to them because one day they stopped and haven’t done that since.
But it wasn’t me, damnit. And I’m proud that I at least held back from being the old man screaming at someone for now. I can tell it’s only going to get worse for me from this point on.
Because we have this …
… only it’s a Mustang, and the fucker drives out every morning early and comes home late every fucking day. It’s loud enough that I’ve got 4 other neighbors plotting how to deal with the dude. sigh
I was trying to formulate a response to the OP but I think you nailed it for me - I’ve found “kids being kids” annoying ever since I was one. Or, to put it another way, there’s no reason being a teenager should give you a free pass on being an asshole.
Haha, I wasn’t quite that early but these days it’s less kids and lawn and more people in general everywhere.
Last year my girlfriend and I went for our usual walk across the fields near where we live and I saw this old guy up ahead facing away from us sat on a stile tossing his beer cans in a hedge. He got up as we approached, turned around and started walking towards us. He greeted us and I said ‘that’s nice of you littering there’ and he said ‘well if you care, why don’t you pick it up?’ so I did. He tried to make out that it wasn’t his, and at some point even said that ‘it got stuck to his hand’. I called him a liar. He said ‘call it me again’. I called him a liar. He called me a wanker. Said something about my girlfriend finding a better fella, then threw his plastic bag on the floor to get a reaction out of me.
Another time we were at a local country park and nature reserve in the car park just about to leave. An old guy drives in, opens his car door, lets his dog out for a shit near the big wildlife pond then lets it back in and drives off.
This neighbor has been backpack-blowing his front yard for 1.5 hours now. For reference, it’s smaller than my yard that takes 20 minutes to push mow. I’m about to walk over there and throw a rake at him. I can’t even make out that there are leaves on it.
