"That was close"

I spent a great portion of today working around the house. No, really! I did!

I vacuumed the entire garage. As some of you may know, our garage has been a bit non-functional since the flood. An entire room plus new baby furniture is currently stored where we used to park Hope's car. Then the torsion spring broke on my side of the garage and I have been a bit remiss in fixing it.

So...I cleaned the garage and moved all the stuff from Hope's side to my side. Then I parked my car on her side. Yup. I figured I did all the work, why not park inside again? I even vacuumed out her car too. Cleaned the windshield. Cleaned the dash and all the other plastic parts of her car (it's a Saturn, so there was a lot of plastic!).

But today's entry isn't about my work or all the cleaning I did (I even repotted my aloe). It's about the visit I had from one of the neighbor's kids. He wandered in with the typical slackjaw question: "What'cha doin'?"

Generally, my disdain is thinly veiled. These are the kids who now have a four-wheeler track around their backyard. The "parents" brought in rocks and ramps and routed it over their picnic table. These are the kids we can hear wailing on the far side of the fence. This is the family who purchased a dog and leave it in the backyard all the time. The smell of pot and various masking agents often waft into our backyard when we are grilling or enjoying the quiet of the night.

Today, I decided to try and be a touch more patient with the younger of the two boys. He began batting around the tennis ball we use to mark where Hope is supposed to stop when she pulls into the garage (if you haven't seen it, it is hung by a hockey lace and nudges the windshield when she pulls in and stops). He was having fun, I could clean around him and he wasn't a nuisance at all.

Then, I heard the step-father calling for him. He went zipping out to explain where he had disappeared to. Not much later, he showed up inside our garage again. He said, "That was close." I, in turn, asked, "What was close" without thinking to much of the comment or the question. His reply was to the effect of, "I almost got a spanking."

Wow. I'm not sure quite what kind of parent I will be. But I'm fairly certain that I won't be the spanking kind. I never want my child to be afraid to see me or to come running out of fear of physical retribution. I'm certain there will be times when Hope and I will have to mete out punishments or groundations but I can't fathom ever feeling the need to spank our child-to-be.

So. One would hope the story was over now. But it isn't.

He began playing with the tennis ball again. Then his older brother showed up. The two played for no more than 15 seconds before they began arguing about the ball. I walked out to throw more trash in my can and the youngest began screaming and ran out of the garage. The oldest came out slowly afterward and ran for the street with a smirk on his face.

My assumption is that violence begets violence. If it is ok for Dad to smack a child, then it is certainly ok for a brother to emulate his father and do the same. Now, being an older brother, I certainly know and remember that siblings fight and sometimes punch. But I can only hope to set an example for our child that will let him or her understand that such violence is unnecessary. I hope someday our society and our world can follow suit.

Returning to the sanctity of my garage, once more devoid of the neighbor's children, I continued about my business all the while mulling over these thoughts. It was a little while later that I noticed the tennis ball was missing.

I still have not found it.