Neighborhood of the Damned

    Here’s a call out for some desperately needed advice:  does anyone have any good ideas on how to effectively terrorize children? Other people’s children, that is.  As in the neighborhood mongrels who’ve made a habit of messing with mine.  Not looking to inflict any real physical damage to these ghastly dwarves although I can live with a little emotional scarring.  

   It’s a neighboring nest of rats we need to target. In the three years Jack & Elsie have been playing with them I’d say about 30% of the time involves good kid fun.  The other 70% results in intentional injury and nasty pranks. Or attempts to goad my youngins into behaviors that just ain’t kosher.   The latter has involved unsavory crap like the ol’ show me yours and I’ll show you mine or simple, aggresive pantsing. Or using the lawn as a toilet. This particular knot of vipers has been hell-bent on pissing everywhere.  Tell the youngest girl in the clan that she cannot urinate in the backyard and instantly she’s off trying to whizz in a beach pail behind the shed – and trying to get Jack to do the same. Cut her off at that pass only makes her run, with little Elsie in tow, to take a leak on the front walkway.   

   The former has meant ice balls thrown in faces in the winter, rakes and hammers swung wild and carelessly on their driveway, kids getting pushed off swings and all the malicious acts children can pull on seesaws (leaping off when somebody is in the air; jumping hard from the bottom to crush someone’s ankles under their crashing seat, etc).  That last one led to my ripping out our teeter-totter, half-intending to shove it through the windshield of somebody’s minivan. Instead I put it on Craig’s List, selling it to a lady and secretly praying her kids had decent friends.    I figure it’s the malevolent pranks where I can show my kids a path to the upper hand.  I sure as hell don’t want them becoming lewd and aggressive (we work on right vs. wrong and developing counterdefenses nobody will want to screw with). But developing a sense of practical jokes, including the scathing varieties, ought to help them spot them before they become victims again.  And if they pull off a few that should keep them from feeling like they’re always on the losing end of things.    

   Mainly I’m seeking to give Jack an edge. Elsie, though not yet 4, is sharp, devious and holds a grudge like a Shiite Mujahadeen. I pity whoever crosses her now; I’m still watching my back for revoking her TV time last week.  My son, however, is a bit impressionable. Just looking to be part of the gang he’s fallen prey to most of the pranks.  Many of those have been getting him to eat things – tree sap, bugs, even serrano chiles off my own bushes – while the demons pretend to do the same.  The littlest imp has also tried to get him to eat mud from a gutter and broken glass – by actually doing it herself.  At least Jacko had the prescience to see that as retarded, giggling as the kindergarten dipshit swallowed slop or cut her mouth.  But the older kids have had him running back to me to quell the chile burns or figure out how to get pine tar off his teeth without using WD-40.    Currently I’m working on an eventual return salvo on the serrano pepper incident. This season I’ll be adding a new chile to grow right next to the Habanero plants – the rocotillo. Remarkably similar in appearance, the rocotillo has little to almost no heat. Over the last year or so, Jack’s spice tolerance has grown to where he gobbles up medium-heat salsa and has the occasional buffalo wing or bite of my Balinese pork.  He’ll have no trouble munching up a rocotillo while offering an Archaean firebomb to his bastard pals in the form of a Habanero. 

    But in the meantime I’m looking for extra ideas. When it comes to protecting your children, even from miniature dipshits in suburbia, nothing is beyond consideration. So dig deep and give me your worst ideas…