Yesterday afternoon the neighbor kid who is 7 years old (same age as my son) came over to play Skylanders. If you don’t know what Skylanders is, don’t worry. I don’t quite understand it either. From what I can tell, you purchase a Skylander character, put it on a base that is connected to a video game system, and the character comes to life in a virtual adventure world.

I was upstairs listening to the boys talk about how many lives and super powers each of their characters had. I know I shouldn’t do it, but I love eavesdropping on them. You just never know what kids are going to say. For example, I learned that the neighbor kid’s mom “has the hots” for the Skylander character Boomer. “She thinks he is so cute,” he said to my son.

I went downstairs to watch them play and the neighbor kid greeted me, “Hi, Isaac’s Mom. Do you remember when you got upset with the kid who lives in the house next to yours for calling me an asshole? Well, we’ve had more trouble with him. This weekend he called me a jackass.”

“What?!” my son asked.

“Yeah. He called me a jackass. So my dad said he can’t play in our yard any more.”

“I can’t believe he said that to you!” my son said. They were caught up in the audacity of the 10-year-old’s behavior and forgot that I was there.

I went back upstairs and not much later I heard yelling, and then I heard the back door open, then shut, then open, and more yelling. My husband was in the middle of the commotion. “What is going on?” I asked him.

“The neighbor kid is trying to keep his nemesis out of his yard,” the hubs said.

I looked over and the neighbor kid was standing with his arms outstretched, acting as the filler for his fence, which is missing a section. “No! You cannot come in my yard! My dad said so!”

Then my son opens our back door and yells inside, “Dad, tell him he can’t come in our yard, either! I don’t want him over here.”

“You need to come in for dinner so no one is going to be in the backyard anyway,” the hubs said. 

My son translated that to his version of what was said and loudly yelled to the 10-year-old, “My dad said you can’t come into our yard, either!” He softly added, “And, I have to go in for dinner anyway.”

There’s no telling how long the backyard stand-off would have lasted if the neighbor kid hadn’t been called inside. All I know is, the line has been drawn.