Fire In The Hole

Earlier this evening some kind of something was going on, it sounded like 5 or 6 fire trucks/police cruisers were going through the neighborhood. For some reason, in my head the scenario plays out that something crazy happened to a neighborhood kid, and the police come knocking on my door to find out if I noticed anything, and ask why I myself didn't call the police a la Kitty Genovese. And I say to the cops, "If I called you people every time I heard a kid screaming around here your phone would never stop ringing." Because my fictional self is now officially an old lady.

So I was already cantankerous when I heard a kid yelling "Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!" from what sounded very close by, even taking into account that our porch is only about 5 feet from the sidewalk. I go downstairs to find a kid in my minuscule front yard, near where the sewer guys neglected to put the lattice back under the porch. Making it very much like a hole. Do I go outside? Will yelling at the kids just make them do worse things? Like perhaps actually set fire to my porch? This one looks small enough (maybe 6 or 7?) to actually get freaked out by an adult. But what if he is the smallest of the herd, and brings back reinforcements? By the time I have run through all these possibilities, the kid is thankfully gone and down the street with the rest of them, and there appears to be no smoke. But now all I want to do is yell "You kids get off my lawn!" and spray them with the hose.

I guess we'll have to look into getting a fence put back up...