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The Kids Hate Me
{May 28, 2002}

When I moved into my house in August 2000, the neighborhood kids loved me. Over the last few months I've noticed a marked change in their behavior: now they seem to hate me. I don't understand it. I also really don't care.. but it puzzles me nonetheless. I must know why. I can't destroy them if I don't understand them.

I live on a cul-de-sac at the bottom of a hill that the children seem to congregate in. There is really nothing exciting going on down there, so I assume gravity has something to do with their presence.. perhaps they ride their little bikes and razor-scooters down the hill and are too tired or weak to go back to their homes? I don't know.

We all started off on good terms. The older ones offered to mow my lawn and rake my leaves. The younger tykes rode their bikes up my driveway and I let them play in my yard. I didn't even complain when they started to jump their bikes off the curb and land in my shrubbery. What do I care? I'm renting. As long as their mothers don't sue me, we're good. Plus, I don't want to be that cranky, old guy who runs out into the yard in his boxers yelling and waving his fist.

There has always been a weird, unspoken pressure to be nice to the little bastards. Their moms always give me that look like they're silently judging my "psychotic, loner neighbor" potential so I've gone out of my way to be extra good. I over-paid the kid who half-assed it while cutting my grass. I buy all the crap their schools force them to sell door-to-door like indentured servants. On Halloween, I had the best treats: SlimJims and full-sized candy bars. Plus, I've refrained from climbing up on my roof to snipe them with a b-b gun. But now I wonder if it was all in vain.

Every time I come or go, this one little boy yells out at me, "Hey Chad! You suck!" This is the same kid that routinely jumps out in front of my car on purpose with his arms outstretched in the "stop!" position. I go out of my way to not kill him day after day, and this is the thanks I get? How could he think I suck? The only time I ever see him is as I drive in or out of the neighborhood. I'm going to start beating him to it by yelling out, "Hey, kid! YOU suck!" before he gets a chance to scream at me. I shouldn't feel bad about that punk. He's the same one that came up to me one day while I was walking my dog and said, "Chad? You're weird."

"Now, THAT's what a guy wants to hear," I replied.

"You really *are* weird, though."

"Thanks. I like you, too."

Then he rode off on a pink girl's bike. I ask you: just exactly who is the weirder one in that conversation?

For whatever reason, I seem to have become the Boo Radley of my neighborhood. Except instead of leaving neat little gifts for the children in my yard, my dog Guido leaves little "gifts" in their yards and tries to either hump or attack their pets.

The damn kids are starting to rub off on me, too. I find myself acting more and more like the punks. Now when people come up to me and say, "Hey Chad, you're a self-important egotistical jackass." I wittily reply, "I am fully aware that you are afflicted with such a sad state of affairs, however I would now ask that you let it be known to me what exactly it is that I seem to be?" Then they say, "did you just say 'I know you are but what am I?' You loser." And then I weep openly, utterly unable to verbally defend myself.

It's gotten to a point where now, I hate the kids. Where I used to have a soft spot in my heart for the cute little children, I now believe that these foul human larvae are dirty, ugly, carriers of disease with foul mouths and bad attitudes. The scariest thing is: if they keep going down the path they're on.. they'll end up like me.