The Feral Neighbor Saga Continues.

[elfs]

The neighbors gave us a better peek into their lives Sunday, despite D., the mother's, insistance that the children not say anything to the neighbors because then we'll know something about them and when you know something about somebody you have power over them. She must take hints from my ex. One of the boys, M., was having his birthday party. It had been put off and put off and put off, as far as we had been told, for various reasons but we were now promised that it would be happening between two and four in the afternoon.

At two, nobody was home.

Kouryou-chan was very upset. They showed up around 2:45, and they weren't ready, but the children invited Kouryou-chan and Yamaarashi-chan over to play with them, so they did. We discovered that the war of the sexes is alive and well next door: the men drink beer and watch sports until they're tired of listening to their wives yell at them, they get up and do what is demanded half-heartedly and then they go back to drinking beer. D. is in charge. They keep chickens in their unfinished basement and pour their dog's food onto the ground in little piles. They bought a brand new trampoline a couple of weeks ago. Already, the safety netting is torn, the padding that held it up shredded, and thanks to children climbing on it half the bars are broken and twisted at the top so that it looks like some sadistic collection of god-sized dental picks and scrapers looming over us. For all D.'s whining about the driveway, their backyard has gone to hell pretty fast.

The party was a chaotic mess. M. was deeply disappointed, and his father treated him less like a son and more like an embarassment, when he paid attention at all. They got around to hot dogs and cake around 7. There was no plan, no games arranged, no thought put into it. I feel sorry for those kids.

I got home from my bicycle ride Monday night to find Omaha and Kouryou-chan getting ready to walk to the park. Exhausted from the Miller Creek Ravine ride, I decided to stay home make dinner instead. We were worried about the eldest boy, who's 9, because one of the things he had gotten for his birthday was a gas-powered pocketbike, one of those micromotorcycles that quite are illegal on public streets. As it turns out, his parents aren't so idiotic as we thought: it has a governer on it preventing it from going more than 12mph and he has a full set of helmet, knee and elbow pads.

On the other hand, we discovered that the 13 year old girl, A., and the 16 year old boy who often watch over the other five kids are not dating; no, he's her nephew. They're not qualified to watch the other kids, not that many. We discovered that A. had been giving all the neighborhood kids vitamins straight out of the bottle, and Kouryou-chan was taking them-- a double dose if she ate any. Fortunately, Omaha found them because Kouryou-chan had left one in her pocket and it had gone through the laundry, so we've advised Kouryou-chan not to eat anything she gets from the neighbors without our permission.

It's kind of scary, actually getting a real window into a family that qualifies under Dalrymple's "not knowing how to live," whose lifestyle consists primarily of drinking, sex, consuming loud and pornographic entertainment, and whose primary method of communicating with their children begins and ends with screaming and yelling. They've taken the fun out of dysfunctional. It's a bit of a shame that we're now in the "Don't take anything from strangers" camp with the neighbors but I'm just not taking any chances with them and my kids.

Comments

[bldrnrpdx.livejournal.com]

Of course, you already know that handing out vitamins is technically distribution of drugs. And to minors. Which means child endagerment and all sorts of other good stuff. Document, document, document.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

I was *extremeley* upset when I found those vitamins. At first I thought that Kouryou-chan had been filching vitamins from our bottle, and that we'd have to put it up on top of the refrigerator out of her reach (I found them on her side of the bedside table as well as in the washing machine).

But when we talked with her the truth came out. Apparently A had told her to take only one a day. I think A thinks she's doing Kouryou-chan a service, but A is still too young (at 13) to really understand what is right and wrong about her actions...it isn't just about handing out "drugs" in the form of vitamins to children that could cause potential overdoses. It's trying to parent another parents' children without their permission as well.

I'm going to be having a chat with A sometime this week when I have my chance to about why what she did was wrong and that she cannot give my kids anything without my or my husband's express permission again.

[(Anonymous)]

Ditto on the vitamins.

Does your zoning allow chickens?

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Does your zoning allow chickens?

Unfortunately it seems to, or at least that's what I've gotten so far from the municipal code that I've read at this point. However, I'm going to be contacting the local government to get more information about this.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

There's chickens, and then there's chickens *in the basement*. Check the code to see if it's specific about where one can have said chickens. For instance, I'm pretty sure that our city allows chickens but they have to be outside in a coop or some such like that.

[intrepid-reason.livejournal.com]

You have got to be kidding me. They actually are giving out pills to the neighborhood kids! What happens if some innocent seeming vitamin actually had something which one of your girls was allergic to? Grrr!