Let me preface this post by admitting that I just watched an old news piece about the James Bulger murder. That fact doesn’t make my point any less valid, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I thought it fair to let you know.

Right, then. My neighbors.

My immediate neighbors (not the awesome, cookie baking neighbors – the other ones) have recently become infatuated with my family. This could not be more annoying.

I don’t consider myself to be a helicopter mom, but I do have a problem with handing my children off to STRANGERS. The family next door has lived there for… My God – it will be a full freakin’ YEAR next month! This is everything I know about them:

• They are from Ethiopia.
• The mom is stunningly beautiful.
• The dad smokes, and tosses butts all over the yard.
• They have 3 kids – 6 year old girls, and a 3 year old boy.
• They never shoveled their side walk during any of the snow storms last winter.
• Their recycling practices leave much to be desired.

I don’t get the creepy, child molester vibe from them, but at the same time, I don’t feel comfortable leaving my kids unattended in a stranger’s house. I don’t care if that house shares a common wall with mine.

They are either super nice people, or crazy pedophiles. I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing, or what, but the dad – I don’t even know his name – keeps telling us at every opportunity, “You guys are young. You should leave your kids with us for the night and go out. Have a good time! We’ll watch your kids. My wife, she loves kids!”

Sure, that seems like a sweet offer, but they skipped the part where we adults get to know each other. You know, the little things like, oh, YOUR NAME might be a good start.

I tried to make conversation with the mom when Karis darted into their house. She stared at me standing in her entry hall, and said, “It’s okay. You can go home. They’ll just play on the deck.” I can see the deck from my living room, so I was ok with that. Naturally they only stayed on the deck for 10 minutes.

The few times Jesse or I have gone over there to drag Karis home again, the kids have been running around like a suburban reenactment of Lord Of The Flies. The parents were nowhere to be found. Am I ok with leaving my mischievous 4 year old, and my clumsy 2 year old at a house where there is unsupervised chaos going on? Um, lemme think about that. No.

Jesse says I’ve watched too many true crime dramas. My answer: “I’d rather watch them and be paranoid, than be ON one!”

As much as I detest forced socialization, I’m working out a get-to-know-my-neighbor strategy. I can’t ignore them. Karis demands to play with them approximately 47,000 times a day. They are just as eager to see Karis. Just last night, as I was making dinner, they rang the bell. I didn’t want to have to fight with Karis about it being dinner time, and her not being able to go play, so I decided to ignore the bell, and hope they just went away. Yeah, except they didn’t go away – they opened my door and came into my house. What if this had been Family Naked Night? We don’t actually have a Family Naked Night, but they don’t know that!

So. My plan for getting to know the mom: I’m going to invite the kids over to do an arts and crafts project, (Oh, Christ, somebody kill me now. 5 crazed kids running around my house with glue sticks.) and politely insist that she come along so we can chat over tea. Too obvious? I thought I’d open with, “Hey! Let’s Google ourselves and see if either of us have ever been convicted of a felony!”

Help me out here, Internet. Does anyone have a good suggestion for getting to know a painfully shy neighbor? How do I tell her I’m not comfortable with my kids playing at her house without sounding like a complete ass-hole? Am I a complete ass-hole? Is there a twelve step program for ass-hole parents?

Hell, maybe I AM a helicopter mom. My dad once left my sisters and me with a traveling encyclopedia saleswoman from England for 2 weeks. I’m not even making that up. He totally left us in the care of some college student he met while she was going door to door selling encyclopedias. He bought the complete set, and asked her to house sit for him while he went away for his annual training. We lived.

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