Probably Shouldn't Have Said That Repost from May 2010

I live in a decent neighborhood. Not very upscale but definitely a safe happy neighborhood. Lived there almost 10 years now. . And since we live walking distance from the school my yard quickly became the spot where many teenagers would come to hang out. Mostly to play b-ball or jump on the trampoline.

Me being the nice lady that I am will often go out and serve the kids drinks, ice pops, snacks whatever I have on hand. Well last year my son made friends with some questionable charecters at his middle school and they too started coming down my street to hang out. at the time we had 3 four wheelers and when someone had the time to supervise we would let all the kids take turns and ride them. Well we do not have a garage and like I said good neighborhood so we never locked them up. And you guessed it , Two four wheelers disappeared.

In my heart I knew immediately who had taken them. Problem is I did not know the last name of the little thief or where he lived. And since I never recorded the serial numbers I didn't think the police would be of help. I chalked it up to a lesson learned and just kept our remaining four wheeler locked up. A week later I returned form work to find that the last four wheeler had been taken, the lock had been cut. I was pissed. The boy who I'm sure took it stopped coming around as well. It has bothered me for a an entire year. I felt so violated and angry but decided that I would get over it.

I talked to my son about it and he was so confident that his friend would never do that. Naive child! I tried to share my mature wisdom with my son about hanging with such bad characters but he felt I was being judgmental and unfair. He reminded me that I had no proof and I was stereotyping the kid. Which I was at the time but I was following my mothers instinct.

Well yesterday, my boys were out playing bball and who did I see...The thief! Since last year I have learned that this particular boy is gang affiliated and an area trouble maker. I could not just let him be. I tried. So I went outside and called the boy over. My plan was to calmly tell him that I knew he stole my stuff and how wrong it is to steal. You know kinda give him some motherly advice, put him on the right path, appeal to his softer side. But as I began that approach the look on his face was basically "whatever". I tried to remain appropriate but I could sense that he was planning his next heist. The more I tried to reason with him the more his face showed he could care less. So I decided "Fu*k It" I'm gonna just tell him how I really feel.

And I did...I told him that "if anything gets missing from my property at all in the next year that I would hunt him down and bust a cap in his ass". Since obviously the police don't intimidate him. In hindsight maybe that was not the best tactic. What do you think?

Update-During this time the RA was gone most weekends and so were my boys so I was often home alone. After I said what I did I was really scared. To be honest I had watched lots of Gang shows on the history channel and had learned that one usually does not threaten a gang member without some sort of retaliation. I played hard to the boy but deep inside that lil fucker scared me. For a couple weeks after that I kept waiting for them to do a drive by on my house or break in at night and mess me up. But nothing. Nothing else has been stolen. And I recently found out that when all the kids were discussing where they would hang out after school one day and my house was mentioned that same boy said "oh, No I am not going down there, I'm scared of Marlon's mom" Yeah it worked!