Wednesday, July 09, 2008

New Friend In The Hood

Last week the kids made a discovery. They were riding their bikes around the neighborhood when the came across one of "Angel or Devil's" classmates. It turns out that she lives just two blocks over from us! You can almost see her house from our back door!

This is great news!

I'll call the new kid Bangs because up until now her bangs have been her most prominent feature. When I came home from work the other day "Angel or Devil" and "Let's Go Crazy" were hanging out with Bangs and playing some video games. This gave me a good chance to check out this new intruder.

She seemed fairly normal from what I could tell. You can actually have a conversation with her, which is a real bonus! She gets the OK in my books.

The kids hung out for a while until Bang's mom called to tell her it was time to go home. Since we were heading out to the store anyway, the kids and I walked with her back to her house.

I met her parents and they too seemed to be pretty normal and down to Earth. Her Mom also said, "The kids can come over anytime."

This is what I was waiting to hear! She really doesn't know what she's getting into!

It looks like we might have a good thing going here. A handy, low-maintenance friend just down the road with normal parents who don't mind having the kids come over. For me, it's a dream come true.

My only fear is that my little troop of maniacs will queer the deal for us.

My kids don't have a very solid grasp of social etiquette. They assume that anybody would want them to visit at anytime. They see absolutely nothing wrong with heading over unannounced and asking if they can come in or even stay for dinner. No matter what time of day it is, they always want to go to her house. I know if they are ever out of sight that they will bolt to see what Bangs is doing or to see if they can come over. This is after just 4 days!

Another possible problem is the fact that my kids tend to travel in packs. Although this should just be a relationship between Bangs and "Angel or Devil" the other kids insist on going over too. Maybe they're afraid that someone might fart and they'll miss it!! I know I would get a little tired of having 2-3 kids coming over to my house all the time.

Additionally, my kids are becoming specialists in the art of telephone harassment. A couple of weeks ago "Angel or Devil" got invited to a Birthday Party. As is usually the case the invitation had the phone number listed for the party girl. So one day Jules answered the phone and it was the Birthday Girl's mom calling to complain about the dozen or so calls she'd been getting daily from "Angel or Devil". Sneaky bugger!

Now we can only hope that the family of Bangs won't be subjected to the mass calling treatment. "Angel or Devil" called at 9am last Saturday, which I'm sure was really appreciated. I also know that she has called and left messages for Bangs too. I'm hoping that she at least had something normal to say and didn't just start rambling on about buttholes, pee pees and farts or any of her other favorite topics.

We've got a good thing going here and I don't want the kids to ruin it by being too aggressive. We have to ease into this situation. We don't want to scare them away, after all. Maybe we need to send "Angel or Devil" over on some solo missions to ease the burden on Mother of Bangs. Also we should reciprocate a little more by inviting Bangs to play at our house every now and then.

It's great to see "Angel or Devil" with a friend in the neighborhood though. Now we just need to find a friend for "Let's Go Crazy" in our vicinity.

1 comment:

Heather said...

I'm weird I guess because I will let my daughter go to her friends' houses but it takes an act of Congress to get me to let them come here. Not that I am bothered by it, I just feel strange doing it, like they are not going to like me, or make fun of my daughter because we live a certain way or something.