Folks, take note! Imagine yourself arranging the table with a dish that you have dedicated your entire being to. Suddenly—WHAM! A baseball smashes into your dessert after smashing through your window, breaking glass. Even worse, your small girl was only a few inches away from receiving a headshake. It sounds scary. That is precisely what occurred with me. I am 36-year-old Angela, a proud single mother of my 6-year-old firecracker Penny, as well as the fur-mom of Bella the cat and Pancy the poodle. The four of us reside in a lovely cottage at the end of Maple Street, a picturesque slice of suburban nirvana.
Norman Rockwell would be so happy looking at our small family portrait that he would cry. However, every masterpiece requires its antagonist, and ours happens to live next door. I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, Baron Bigshot, the bane of my life. Alright, it is not his true name. But believe me, it fits him like one of his dozen or so custom-tailored Armani suits. Imagine a middle-aged man who wears a watch that costs more money a year than I do. He also has a permanent scowl. For you, that is Baron Bigshot. Now, I do not tend to assess people according to their financial account balances. However, I draw the line when your neighbor’s way of life begins to interfere with your mental health. Let us go back to that fateful Saturday morning when everything began.
“Can I play outside, Mom?” Penny enquired, her large sparkling eyes beseeching. I looked out the window and sighed. I am sorry, my love. Baron Big I mean, the kid of Mr. Next Door is back in baseball. Penny’s expression darkened. “But why may not I use our yard for play?” How do you explain to a six-year-old that our neighbor’s spawn and his lack of aim are to blame for our yard turning into a war zone? It all began a few months ago when the 15-year-old holy terror known as Baron Bigshot’s “beautiful little angel” fell in love with baseball. While I support children being active, this was not simply play. This was like having a bunch of coffee-drinking squirrels next to you in a batting cage.
The area turned into a baseball minefield. While gardening, poor Mrs. Franklin received the shock of her life. She was plucking weeds from the bottom up when—THWACK! A fastball made its way up to her butt. Ouch! “Oh, my God!” She let out a yell and leaped like a scared cat. If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would have laughed. Next came Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson was a kind old man who enjoyed nothing more than reading Hemingway on his front porch. He was engrossed in “The Old Man and the Sea” one moment, then staring at actual stars the next. As the paramedics placed him into the ambulance, he said, “I have gone through war, but I never dreamed I would be taken down by a youngster with a baseball.”
