Shattered Glass

The high school is at the end of our block. There are people who don't like living near a school; they don't like the noise, they say. In my opinion, there's bad noise and good noise, and football games and band practice fall into the latter category.

During the school year, in the mornings there is about a half-hour of traffic as a steady stream of student drivers and parents delivering students go to the school. A handful of buses, too. And the walkers, in ones, twos, and threes, pass by on their way to school. The same happens for about a half-hour in the afternoon. We've never been bothered by living near a school.

Until last spring. We have a lightpost on the edge of our front lawn, right next to the sidewalk. There is a pile of stones around the lightpost. We used to have flowers there instead of stones but (a) the newspaper deliveryman used them for target practice when tossing the paper out of his car window and (b) the neighborhood dogs pretty much finished off whatever he left by peeing on them. So we went to the pile of apple-sized stones.

One day last spring I came home to find that one of the four glass panels in the lightpost had been broken. The glass was in the fixture and on the stones below. A few days later a second panel was broken. At that point we removed the remaining panels and the bulb until after school let out for the summer. During the summer I had new panels made and we installed them and all has been well.

Until today. School has been in session for approximately two weeks, and I came home to find a broken glass panel.

The strange thing is, it didn't make me angry. It made me sad. I was an impulsive and self-centered young teenager at one point and did some things I shouldn't have. I didn't think or care about the impact of those things on other people. So I suppose it is a case of "what goes around comes around."

It took time and money to get those new glass panels. It took effort on my husband's part to make the lightpost look presentable and be functional again. And it felt crummy that someone had done this to us. We'd say to each other, "We have an enemy." And now, here we go again.

We imagine that they are using our own stones to damage our property. Probably this evening we'll go out and gather up the stones and leave the bare dirt there around the base of the lightpost. And see what happens. And, if the kid or kids are resourceful enough to find stones someplace else and break one more panel, I suppose we'll dismantle the lightpost completely.

I just can't imagine that the fun somebody is having doing this is anywhere near the amount of unhappiness that he's causing.