I am, once again, fighting in the Facebook page of our housing estate.
I left the Facebook page for a while last year, after an argument about door-to-door salespeople – just trying to do their job, if you ask me, and how hard is it to just answer the door and say, “no thanks, I’m not interested”?! – but I rejoined when I realised there might be drama happening, drama to which I was no longer privvy.
This week, I realised I am the drama. Without me, there is no drama – not just because I’m not seeing it, but because I’m actually the one creating it. (This has been a tough pill to swallow.)
Before I get into the drama proper, let me give you a bit of background. The first thing you should know is that there are a lot of kids in our estate, kids who seem to range in age from about two to late teens, something that feels pretty normal for a newish estate like ours (our house was built in 2016; earlier this year, the last house on the plans was finished and has since been bought).
As it’s summer, the kids are out a lot, riding their bikes and walking their dogs and fishing in one of the many ponds (there are about four in the estate, populated with crawdads and God knows what else – one of our neighbours even stocks his with fish, so the kids will have something to fish for, which is dotey of him).
You can’t cross the road without coming across some child or other, alone or in groups, and while they’re not what I would describe as friendly – I feel like, if this were in Ireland, you’d get some “hiya missus!”es here and there, which are sorely lacking in Fort Wayne – I have never had any issues with any children in our estate. They’re just, you know, doing kid stuff.
One day last week, as I walked to pick Atlas up, I noticed a group of about five young boys – I would say early to mid teens, but I’m not a great judge of age, so who knows – playing with what looked like a Nerf gun making slightly tinny machine gun noises. I thought nothing of it, at least not beyond, probably, ugh, Nerf guns. (Anyone who’s had to dig those little foam bullets out of their flowerbeds will understand my tone.)
I thought nothing more of it.
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