Tuesday, July 10, 2007

So, Who Does This?

(warning: rant!)

So....

We live in a neighborhood where the older children are not much seen as they only leave their houses to jump into someone's car and speed away. Our neighbor across the street has an only child - a daughter - who graduated from High School this year. As a younger girl I didn't think much of her, kind of snotty and stand-offish, but she's had her moments. Her birth parents are divorced and she only lives in our neighborhood for half of any given week.

ANYWAY. Yesterday she turned 18. Around 8:00 cars started pulling up, parking at the curb and unloading groups of 3 to 4 teenagers. At 8:30 a (evidently - I didn't see it) a Hummer limo pulled up and the teenagers all piled in and disappeared. At 10:00, the girl's dog (a lab mix) started barking. He barked and barked and barked. At 12:30, the poor animal was still barking. Evidently, her mother and step-father were not at home. The lights were all blazing at their house, so I thought I'd try to call and let her know the dog was outside. No answer. So - I didn't know the teenagers had all disappeared into the limo and I kept trying to find the daughter.

The front door was wide open, I thought I'd go let the dog in the house, but the screen door was locked. I sat in their front yard with the dog until 1:00, when the Hummer limo pulls up and starts emptying out drunken 18-year-olds, who promptly got into their cars to drive home (seriously, should I have called the police?) One girl was actually carried into the house.

So. I ask you. Who does this? Leaves their 18-year old alone on her 18th birthday?

My instinct was to mind my own business (and did she make it my business when she left her dog outside to bark until 1 in the morning?), but really. Who does this?

Comments:
I absolutely would've called the police about the underage drunk drivers, and also about the barking dog. I don't know exactly what the laws are regarding barking dogs, but I'm pretty darned sure that this was something reportable.
 
That's terrible. It's hard to know what to do in that situation.
 
Wow! That just blows my mind. I like to think that I would have called the police, but it's such a hard call!
 
Disgusting. Wow, I'm sorry. Poor dog, poor girl, bad judgement all around. I would have called the police. (In fact, I have called the police to report 'activity' in the duplex across the street from me-- which lead to, I believe their extraction from the apartment.
 
Yikes! I don't know what I'd do in that situation...
 
Clueless parents, I guess, who badly need a clue.


Oh yeah, I'd have called the cops for sure, and report the company the ran the rental as well. And totally tell the parents. I'm all about the grown-up tattling to the parents, mostly because if my kids ever do that I'd want to know about it.
 
More people than you know or would believe do it! However, there are far more reposible parents out there who get crap for being "too hard" on their kids! It's all whacked!
 
Sounds the crazy teenage girl across the street from me - she and her friends had a party one night when she was home her first break from college (mom was at a bar with her own friends) and when the cops came, they turned out all the lights and didn't answer the door!! The cops waited for the mom to come home and then kids started filing out one by one (after a breathalizer) into the paddy wagon, to the police station. Mom ended up getting community service along with her daughter!
 
Now that makes a lot of sense huh? Rent a limo to go drinking, then everyone drive their own vehicle home afterwards. They should have all planned to sleep overnight on the floor.

Hard to say what to do isn't it? I live next to some crazy neighbors myself and mostly I keep quiet because I'm a bit afraid of the son, but some days I really scold myself for that behavior.

I feel a bit sorry for the daughter. Doesn't sound like her parents care much about her and that makes me sad. I feel really sorry for the dog - and for you having to listen to him bark and babysit him.

Can't wait to see what you buy when the diet ends...soon!
 
It's easy for me to say because I'm not the one living across the street from these idiots, but I'd say to call the police on their ass. You could easily be saving someone's life, maybe one of the teenagers, maybe some innocent person who might get hit by them. It is the responsible thing to do. But like I said, I don't have to live there.

Ditto on the dog issue.

(Actually, now that I think about it, I DID call the city on my neighbors twice. Once, when they hired The Idiot Crew to repaint their house, and The Crew was sanding 20- and 30-year-old leaded paint off the house with absolutely no dust-collection equipment; and again, when they raked all their leaves into the gutter in contradiction to city ordinance that had been distributed on in a mail flyer within the past month. Assh0les.
 
Oh. Oh my. There are so very, very many issues with your neighbors in that post. The kid, the dog, the parents...wow.

On the bright side, makes me feel like I'm not a total loss as a parent.
 
Yeah. Summer with teenage kids is always fun. You staying with the dogs sounds like my "babysitting" the kids across the street from my old house when their friends threw bottles in their yard about 1:00am and 1:30am and 2:00am I ended up calling the cops because the kids were pretty young and didn't know how to handle it and the parents were no where to be seen. I helped them clean things up and made them tell the cops who did it.
 
That makes me sad. Very very sad - for the daughter and the dog. (and a lab, too.)
 
Yeah, I have the same as Rani. It makes me sad. But, I would have called the police. Because of driving drunk. What a nasty situation.
 
You went above and beyond, sitting with the poor puppy! I would have called the police about both the dog and the teenagers drinking.

I'm curious where the alcohol came into play--a licensed limo company (hopefully) would not have risked allowing underage people to consume inside their vehicle. Something like that could cause them to lose everything, if, for example, anything had happened to one of the teenagers after they partied all night in their limo. If you happen to know who the limo company was, you might want to put a bug in someone's ear...

It is always better to call the cops than not in cases where someone is drunk driving. There are so many tragic stories of teens on prom nights, or graduation nights! Plus, most teens are not very good driver's to begin with...;-)

I don't envy you having to go through that evening!
 
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