This is a 4 part series of events that occurred when I was in Junior High. This is a true story, making it much funnier than fiction. Because who could make this crap up?

    We lived in the country when I was in Junior High school. One of our neighbors had 3 boys, one of who was my age. Naturally, we were best buds when we first moved there. But something happened by the time I was in 7th grade and things fell apart. For some reason their entire family became our enemy, and to this day I can’t figure out why a whole family would pile on like that. I’m not going to name names or tell where we lived. I’m sure if one of their family members visits this blog and reads they, they’ll probably laugh at these stories. Now that I’m no longer a kid, the whole episode, or I should say, multiple episodes is pretty darn funny.
    One incident occurred in the winter time and I don’t remember what order this happened, but in my mind it was an isolated incident. It was dark outside and we were eating dinner. There was a thud from the outside of the house, then another and another. My mom got up and looked out the front window and saw that there were three people throwing snowballs at our house. Dad looked out and they couldn’t see who it was, but by this time they already knew who it probably was.
    They watched as the thumping continued. Of course, anyone knows that you can only throw snowballs until your arm gets tired, then it’s no fun anymore. I think my parents were counting on that happening eventually. They were also waiting for a broken window or some damage so they can run out and catch the morons out front.
    No damage to our house occurred and they eventually got bored and left. However, my mom wasn’t going to let that go, so she stepped out on the front porch and watched where the three silhouettes went. Yup, they went right to the neighbor’s yard and into their front door. That’s wasn’t too intelligent on their part. If they were smart, they would have walked the other direction and looped around. Maybe they just didn’t care or thought my parents were pacifists.
    Now I need to stop and describe something that will become the focus of this story. Our house had shake siding. It’s a type of grooved wood that was common on houses built in the 40’s through 60’s. It is usually nailed on top of tar paper (commonly called “felt”) with plywood underneath. It provide good sound protection, so those snowballs hitting our house was only a dull thudding sound.
    OK, back to the story…
    Dinner was over and my parents were quite annoyed by the arrogance of the neighbor kids thinking they’re going to throw snowballs at our house whenever they felt like it. They also knew that their mother would just act indignant that her darlings would do such a thing. Their dad worked long hours and that was part of the problem with their boys. No fatherly supervision.
    Then my parents started to suit up. I was curious what was up and dad grinned at me. He told me he was going to take care of something. Mom suited up as well, which I thought was unusual. They told us they’d be back in a few minutes.
    Sure enough a few minutes later they were back. Laughing. Then they told us what they did.
    They went to the front of the neighbor’s house and threw snowballs at their house, being careful to hit the siding… which was aluminum. The original aluminum. Well, that siding made a loud bang every time a snowball hit it. It didn’t take long before their three boys and their mother were peaking through the curtains, looking out the front picture window. My dad said he hoped she saw “who” they were, because he’d love to have a conversation with her about the incident.
    My parents slowly walked back to their own house to make sure that the neighbors knew exactly who threw the snowballs at their house. It was one of those: “Mess with us and we mess with you” messages.
    The neighbor boys never pulled that again. I would love to have been a fly on the wall of their family’s house that night. I’m sure when their dad came home they were all uppity about what happened. I suspect their dad probably informed them that there was nothing they could do about it since they started it and there was no property damage. Or, maybe their mother was smart enough to figure out what was going on. I can’t say for sure. Either way, if their parents questioned them and they denied throwing snowballs at our house, then I would think they would have visited my parents to get the whole story. Their parents either figured it out, or their kids told them.
    I can only infer these things because their parents never visited us or mentioned it. Funny how that works out.