We're being shelled............

So I was *that* neighbor last night. There's a family that lives at the end of our street who has a few teenage kids. Those kids always seem to have friends over, so there's always 8-10 teenage kids in that house each night. Add in the fact that the parents seem to think that their job is to be friends with the kids rather than be parents and it's a bit of a mess.

These parents seem to think that it's a great idea to shoot off fireworks every night around 10:00 PM for 7-10 days before July 4th in a city that doesn't allow fireworks of any kind. Now I'm not a scrooge to the level that I mind them shooting off fireworks on the 4th or even July 3rd, but it gets a bit old when they're doing it late every single night for several days. Plus, there's a lot of kids in the neighborhood that are likely asleep by that time much like Kali 1.4.

So, I walked down the street at 10:15 PM last night and arrived just after they had gone inside. A couple of kids were still outside, so I asked to talk with their parents. I told the parents it was illegal to shoot off fireworks in the city and that shooting them off late every night was a problem given all the kids in the neighborhood. The mom looked at her husband who walked up late and said, "He says that it's illegal to shoot fireworks in the city".

Now, I may have 'stupid' written on my forehead and just not know it, but I'm pretty sure that there's no way in hell that these two both didn't know that fireworks were illegal in the city. The mom topped that comment by another gem. She said that "they didn't mean to disturb anyone".

So you're shooting off three-inch mortar shells in a neighborhood at 10:00 PM on a weekday night five days before July 4th and you didn't mean to disturb anyone?????? As shocked as I was by that comment, I kept my composure and said that I hoped we wouldn't have this issue anymore and thanked them. They gave a hollow-sounding 'sorry' as I walked away.

Any wagers on how much parental control these parents had as a kid? I'll put the over under at 0%.