when i was a kid

It’s funny that owning a house has made me instantly older. I used to be pretty laid back and carefree. I used to laugh at my dad when he complained about the neighbor’s wood burning or annoying dog. Now, that’s me. I have caught myself saying out loud “When I was a kid…” several times in the past month. I am only 25! I am practically a kid. Geez. My crankiness started a few days after moving in. I was walking to the closet and looked out the small window on our front door only to see someone staring back at me. I thought I was just being paranoid, but I looked again, and yes, there was a teenage kid standing at my front door. We happen to live on the bus stop corner, and this kid had taken the liberty of using my stoop as an umbrella. Nice. The next day, he was right back there, standing proudly as if he owned the place. When I was a kid (bear with me), we were forbidden from stepping one inch onto the lawn at my bus stop. This horrible old woman lived there, and the rumor was if you let the tiniest part of your foot creep onto her grass, she’d sic her little dog on you.
Matt and I differed on what to do about our lurker. Granted, he wasn’t doing any harm, but it was creepy, and damn it, this was finally my house and I had the right to kick people off the step. I wanted to send him to the curb with the rest of the kids, but Matt feared retaliation: “It’s hard to scrape egg off a house, Maureen.” The kid was a little scary. He was, as we used to call it in junior high, wigging out. His pants were hovering magically below his ass, and he was wearing this huge puffy jacket. Not in the style of L.L. Bean, mind you; it was more in the style of Puff Daddy. Matt won. We let the kid takeover our stoop, and to prevent him from peeping, I taped a Home Depot ad over the window. Now that’s classy.