Party On, Dude

We had a little excitement last night in our corner of Medford. The teenagers who live in the house next door had themselves a not-so-little party, and they managed to draw the attention of Medford's finest. The only bummer is that I missed all the action, even though we were home and awake at the time.

These kids have a few parties each summer, but this one was bigger and rowdier than the previous ones. When I took the dog our for her "last call" around 11:15, there were about 25 kids in the adjacent back yard. In the past we've usually had the AC on during their parties, so the noise hasn't kept us from sleeping, but it's been nice enough lately that we haven't needed the AC. (Of course, we could always turn it on if we needed to block the noise, but when the houses are this close together, people should have a little more respect for their neighbors.)

About an hour later, I was watching TV, and the Mrs. was engaged in one of her Wordscraper games on Facebook. We were kind of waiting for the party to burn itself out so we could go to sleep with a reasonable chance of not being disturbed. Suddenly she jumped up and went outside. At first I thought she'd gone to get something from the car, but she didn't come back. Turns out the arrival of the police sent kids scattering, and she wanted to make sure that none of them used our yard as an escape route. She came back inside about ten minutes later and told me what was going on. Somehow, I didn't notice that any of this was happening.

In the light of the morning, we could see that not only did the departing kids leave a swath of debris in the next-door back yard, but they also managed to pull down part of that yard's back fence as they climbed over it. Sweet. I'm sure their landlord will be excited. I can't help wondering where he was last night, since he lives on the second floor of the house next door. You'd think that given the previous parties, he'd want to keep an eye on things. But they're his tenants (though maybe, not for long?) so they're ultimately his responsibility.

And I don't know who called the cops, but I'm glad someone did.