I have seen the future, and it comes with rocks.

So last night two of the neighbor kids were throwing rocks and our windows. Just standing down there chucking rocks. At our windows. What the hell? I mean, the play area is covered with rocks, not the best idea in the world, I grant you, but who just stands there throwing rocks at windows? I yelled at them in my rotten German and they pretended not to understand me, so I remembered what R said to me once - if you ever want to yell at somebody or insult them, do it in your mother tongue. It works much better that way. So I switched to English and said "But you understand I'm angry, right?" and one of the two said "yes." Turns out he's the son of the Swiss-American guy we met at the get-together. So I went down and talked to the parents, and Swiss-American guy scolded the kids and made them apologize to me and shake my hand. The mother of the other kid who was involved was remarkably unconcerned and just said something about how stupid it is to have stones on the playground. Um, yeah, it's stupid but just 'cuz they're there doesn't mean your kid has to chuck them at people's windows! Try acting a little concerned.

Afterwards R and I were talking and he said "Six years from now we're going to be on the other side of that conversation." It turns out boys? They do stupid stuff. They break things. They push their limits. They throw rocks. The kids' mistake, R said, was doing it so close to home. That's just dumb. You're supposed to do it farther from home, on the way to school or something, when you can't get caught. Methinks he speaks from experience. What this all boils down to, of course, is that apparantly one day some woman is going to ring my bell and say something like, "Your son was throwing rocks at my car." Of course, she'll be speaking Dialekt so it'll sound more like "DeensnhaschsschteensismiAUTOgwrfn" but I'm pretty sure I'll get the gist.

Things just got interesting. And by interesting I mean "oh crap."

(Yes, they did break one. In our bedroom. Oh, the window is only 3 feet wide and runs all the way from ceiling to floor, so that won't be a pain in the butt when the management company comes to replace it. No, that should go real fast.)