The Monsters Next Door...and the Old Fart Within

I live in Scotland.  Scotland is very far north on the planet.  As such, during the summer, the hours of daylight are plentiful.  I have a next door neighbor.  Actually, I have two, but today we're only talking about one in particular.  The neighbors in question have two children - one toddler and one who must be about ten.  The ten year old is apparently the leader of the other neighborhood children.  Our neighbors also have a trampoline.  As we must all follow our leader of choice, the neighborhood children spend a lot of time in my neighbor's backyard.  On the trampoline.  Yelling.  Even at night.  When they should be sleeping.  When my baby needs to sleep.  You see where I'm going with this.

Ours' is a quiet neighborhood.  I love this.  It is a very small little village outside the bigger city.  There is little to no noise.  Except for on that trampoline.  Even at night.  When children should be sleeping.  Even when my baby needs to sleep and I am trying to get her to sleep.

And so there was my dilemma.  Do I say something?  The mother of the leader of the children once told me in passing that she didn't know why all the children came over to her house, but what could she do?  Many things she could do came to mind, but I felt the question was probably rhetorical, so I simply shrugged.  Later that night as the screeching continued until almost 10pm, my frustration grew.  I wanted, oh, how I wanted, to stomp over there and say, "For the love of pete, lady, shut those kids up!"  I didn't though.  I just rocked my sweet girl a little more firmly than I would have otherwise and muttered.  Oh, how I muttered. 

Once my sweetie was finally asleep, I went and big-fat chickened out.  I reasoned to myself that I don't want to be known as the neighborhood grouch and the daylight hours would be diminishing soon enough and with that, so would the inappropriate hours of screaming.

That was last month.  Now, in just one short month, the sun is setting much sooner and we've also had a lot of rain.  No fun to play on a wet trampoline in the dark. 

And the old fart in me smiles.