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If that ball lands in my yard again I'm keeping it - you'll get arrested

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!, Oct 20, 2008.

  1. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Great call on the 'kids not even playing outside' anymore. Wish it were the case. I'm very pleased and proud that my two (ages 6 and 4) are begging me ALL the time to let them go outside, even in the snow and ice. They like to play basketball/football/whatever.

    I can remember a couple cranky "older" neighbors when I was growing up in the mid-1980s for my bike-riding, kickball-playing years. Most only asked not to ride bikes on their lawns (perfectly acceptable).

    Yet for those, especially without fences, to get cranky over a ball in their yard, do remember this... kids playing outside represent a stable neighborhood. Stable neighborhoods = higher property value.

    Deal with the damn football in the yard every third day during good weather. Unless you're George freakin' Toma...your precious grass isn't that big o' deal.

    EDIT: Yet there are always 'good ones'. Old Man behind my house and to the right (a tree line seperated the properties) actually welcomed me whenever I would placekick footballs over the trees into his yard. He was so gracious (75 at the time, I think) and, apparently, had some experience with coaching football. The gentleman helped with some of my kicking technique -- not unlike Mr. Miyagi, now that I think about it. Wonderful lesson on life.

    Of course, if it would have been a widow instead of a widower, she probably would have get up bear traps in the yard on me...
     
  2. crusoes

    crusoes Active Member

    This cranky old man laughed. Hard. Nicely done!
     
  3. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    The problem is that the kid's parents did cause the old woman emotional distress.
    She's 89 and was arrested.
    She's become an unwilling public figure and in the first story was unavailable for comment because so many people were calling her.

    The cops should have used some sense and nipped this in the bud. Instead it has become a national story and it could have been avoided.
    I suspect that old woman has all kinds of horror stories about how awful the next door neighbors are and it that won't be as simple as the ball bouncing into her yard.
     
  4. She was the one who insisted that police be called. She was the one that refused to sign the citation. She was the one who requested to be handcuffed.

    It sounds like she's the only one who's acted irrationally through this whole process, while everyone else has bent over backwards.
     
  5. Trouser_Buddah

    Trouser_Buddah Active Member

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 15, 2014
  6. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    Word for word, my friend. Word for word.
     
  7. KG

    KG Active Member

    She might be a cranky old bitch, but the fact of the matter is, it was her yard, her private property. If the ball didn't keep going over there, none of this would be going on in the first place.
     
  8. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    She needs to get the Beast for her backyard.[/thesandlot]
     
  9. KG

    KG Active Member

    She can borrow Daisy. She deposits landmines.
     
  10. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    And would piddle on the kids.
     
  11. When my brother and I were growing up, we had daily wiffle ball games in the sideyard we shared with a neighbor couple (they had no kids, both worked). My father insisted that when we mowed the grass, we mow the entire sideyard, right up to the neighbors' house -- there was no fence or anything to show where one yard ended and the other began.

    When we filled our backyard pool, our neighbors insisted on running their garden hose to help us fill it. And of course we always invited them over.

    The neighbor on the other side? A mean drunk. Dad just told us to play on the other side. Some people are worth bothering with.

    When I was old enough to have kids, ours became the yard where all the kids congregated to play wiffle ball, touch football, roller hockey. And I had my sons mow generously on the back and sides.
     
  12. zebracoy

    zebracoy Guest

    I can see both sides of the argument. Lady is tired of all the ruckus; sometimes little Johnny Manning can't complete a pass to his slot receiver.

    I grew up in a neighborhood where we had three cul de sacs with four homes each, and the mailboxes all served as suitable bases because they were so evenly spread out. We used to play home and away games in each of the three circles - but there was one nobody really liked to play at because we did have the one creepy old family whose mailbox was first base.

    Everyone was always told by their parents - and then the other kids - that any balls hit into that family's yard would almost certainly cause an end to all the fun. We were lucky we only had one lefty batter in the area, because balls weren't very often hit to right field. When they were, though, we did our best to get the ball as fast as possible, get the hell out of there and scold the kid who did so.

    The final straw came when the father came out of his house, set up a video camera and waited for something to come flying in his direction. We kept playing, of course, but not a single ball went in his yard in any of the seven innings. I'd like to think we won that battle, but after word got around that the creep was recording nine adolescent boys, we never played in that circle again.
     
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