I moved into a new place and as soon as the weather got nice out a rather annoying thumping started up against one side of my house. Oh great, the twin tweenage boys like to wail soccer balls against our adjoining fence.

The ball kicking continued daily and would go on until it ended up flying into our yard, and then instead of coming to get it or asking for it they continued until rest of the soccer balls they owned made it into our yard (they have a lot of soccer balls.) Then if we didn’t throw them back, which I stopped doing after a few months because I had other things to do with my time, their mother would come and ask for their balls back after a few days.

We asked if there was anything they could do to maybe avoid kicking so many balls over the fence, or ya know just come fetch them on their own so it wasn’t my job. Nope. Apparently the old neighbours were okay with it so we should be too.

Eventually, after waking up my toddler several times, almost hitting him in the head and the last straw waking me up when I was super pregnant from a nap I had enough. I went and dug through our sports equipment, found the air pump, went and got the balls, emptied them of all their air while giggling with childish delight and threw their empty ball carcasses over the fence onto their trampoline for them to discover when they came back out.

That was the last time a ball ever came over our fence. My husband tells me it was a childish thing to do, sure was, and it was god damn satisfying.