Hey you kids! Get away from there!

Paul Lynde said it best (in song no less): "What's the matter with kids today?"

Last night I was at home, sitting in my office at my computer checking Facebook and the DISboards when I hear children's voices behind me. This catches my attendtion as Scott and I have no children (except for Tolliver, and he was lying at my feet).

The voices were coming from the area between our house and the house next to ours. Our next door neighbors don't have any children either. So I figure that the kids I'm hearing are actually in the baseball field of the elementary school behind our house. The backstop is 10 feet from our back fence, and they've been having some sort of sports practice there in the evenings lately. Sometimes the way the sounds travel make them sound closer than they are. We can often hear the coach's whistle more clearly in the bathroom at the front of our house than we can on the back patio. Weird acoustics, to be sure, but I don't worry about it.

And then I hear one of the voices say "He's just looking at pictures on the internet."

Clearly they're looking in my office window at me through the small gaps in the venetian blinds.

So I turn around and pull the shade, figuring that they'd be scared and run off. That's what kids do when they're caught doing something they're not supposed be doing, right? The run off.

Nope. They wave at me and say "Hi!" Three of them. All boys. One in a bike helmet. The oldest appears to be around 7 years old.

I'm so surprised by the brazen attitude in the face of getting caught that it actually takes me a moment to find my voice and say "Hi, yourself. What's going on?"

"Nothing. We're just watching you look at the internet."

Like it's the most natural thing in the world to look into the houses of people you don't know and watch them surf the internet.

And let's think about that for a moment, shall we? The internet. What's on the internet? Who was paying attention to my blog entry yesterday? That's right. Porn. The internet is for PORN! (There's even a song about it from a Broadway musical, for crying out loud!) Thankfully, I really was checking Facebook and the DISboards, so it wasn't NEARLY as difficult a scene as it possibly could have been.

Scott hears me talking to someone and comes into my office and asks what's going on. When he finds out we've got petite peeping toms on our hands, he's LIVID! He rushes outside to confront the kids. He says "you know that looking into people's windows is rude, don't you?"

Their reply "yeah."

So Scott asks, "where are your parents?"

Now this is another time I'd expect a kid to run, or be scared, or make something up. Clearly, I have no understanding of children, because they respond "They're right over here! We'll take you to them!"

What's with these kids? At their age, I would have gotten a serious spanking for doing what they did. I certainly wouldn't be leading the upset adult to my parents! I'd have been hiding in my room, pretending to be invisible!

Two of them live in the house two doors down from us. We've met their mom in passing. The third one is a friend of theirs, and all four parents are sitting in lawn chairs inside their garage enjoying the evening (don't even get me started on the way people here sit in their garages on folding chairs. If you want a front porch, buy a house that has one! Or at least do what the house on the next block did and brick off a small area near the front door and put nice wrought iron furniture there . . . but I digress . . . )

The parents, to our relief, are appropriately upset that their kids are snooping around like that, and assure us that it won't happen again. But the kids still act like nothing is wrong; so it does make one wonder if they'll even get scolded for it.

So, as a temporary solution, I've got some black material that we used at Halloween last year draped over my window (closed blinds and all) until we can see about getting some drapes in there.

As we were putting the black fabric over the window, it occurred to us at the same time:

We've become those cranky old men who yell, "You kids get off of my lawn!"

SIGH

That happened much sooner than we expected it to.

Still. What's the matter with kids today?