Flipping Off Horseflies

“Is this the dumbest thing I’ve ever done?” Tess asked me as I was refilling my water and munching on a protein ball.

“Umm,” I was genuinely pondering the question. “Maybe.”

“Oh,” she dropped her eight year-old head in a mock Homer Simpson act of dejection and trudged out of the room.

She was hoping for a resounding “no.” Or at least some reassurance that her behavior wasn’t in fact actually that dumb.

But the truth is that it was that dumb. And embarrassing. For all of us.

And the other truth is that her brothers, all three of them, were probably more at fault than she was. Obviously.

In fact, our Sunday morning — Father’s Day, actually — had started at Lou’s 9AM tee ball game, at which one of the other parents was recalling an interaction that she’d just had with one of the kindergarten teachers at the kids’ school.

“She said she loved energetic boys, and then she said, ‘like that Greenhalgh boy,’” my mom friend said.

“Ha! Which Greenhalgh boy?” quipped another mom sitting nearby.

I’m sure she meant Lou, but later that morning at mass, as I sat in a pew with Sam who was gesturing wildly and making animal faces — or maybe non-animal faces, like a werewolf or something — it dawned on me that she could have also meant Sam. At age 11, actually 11 and a half, Sam still struggles to sit still for a 57 minute mass and not disturb his neighbor. Or at the very minimum, travel to the bathroom 2 or 3 times and the water fountain once.

And later that afternoon, after Tess’s “dumbest thing she’s ever done,” Tighe and I agreed that she could have been referring to Nate. She’d never taught him, but since he’s a rising 8th grader at the school, there’s a good chance that she’s familiar with his antics. 

There’s a slight chance that she meant Tess, but given that she has such a reputation for good classroom behavior, I highly doubt it. 

Still, Tess was at fault this particular afternoon and she did in fact have to suffer the “incredibly embarrassing” consequences right alongside her brothers. 

After mass, the kids got on their swimsuits and sprinted out to the backyard trampoline with a bottle of dish soap to jump and slip and slide in the new trampoline sprinkler we’d just gotten. Great purchase. Seriously, they spent a solid two hours trying to set it up, followed by countless hours of OUTSIDE entertainment.

Which meant that Tighe and I could eat lunch in peace, fully engaged in one of our more serious, intense dialogues. Topics included, but were not limited to: the state of the world, the state of our marriage, the state of marriage in general, colonization on Mars, the threat of imminent nuclear war, the Protestant reformation, and the strength of schedule in Nate’s lacrosse tournament next weekend. 

Really, it was an important conversation to us, so to be able to start and finish it without eavesdropping and/or interrupting children was a real treat. The TV was off, we were using complete sentences, and our phones were in the other room. It was great. 

But perhaps, we should have had our phones on us because if we had, we would have been able to field multiple missed calls and texts from Nate, who was outside, about 20 yards away. 

Actually, we could see all four kids through the French doors and across the patio to the oversized trampoline in the corner of our yard. In fact, we kept pausing our conversation to comment on their shrieking.

“Gosh, they’re loud.”

“What are they pointing at?”

“It must be a bug. Like a carpenter bee or something. Maybe a dragonfly?”

“I think Lou’s actually crying.”

“Oh, well. Anyway, back to Martin Luther and his 95 Theses…”

As our conversation wrapped up, the kids started to make their way to the house, dripping water across the hardwoods and each telling the tale of the horsefly that had tormented them on the trampoline. 

“Oh, so that’s what it was,” I nodded knowingly at Tighe.

“Why didn’t you answer Nate’s calls???!” they pleaded.

“I don’t know, I didn’t have my phone with me,” I said, reluctantly getting up to fetch the stupid thing from the kitchen.

“Uh-oh,” I said as I opened up my text messages and skimmed the most recent ones. “Oh, this is not good.” 

“YOU GUYS!” I panicked, digesting the text on top.

Because this is what it said: “My family is on their way over and the kids outside are flipping us off and using profanity.”

It was the woman who lives behind us. She’s about 10 or 15 years older than us, and they have no kids, just dogs and a pool. So they’re outside all the time, and aside from the dogs barking back and forth through the fence, we’ve never had any issues with them. As far as I knew anyway.

I started to type a reply when a second text came through.

“And just so you know, a couple of weeks ago, they also sprayed water at us purposely while we were doing yoga.”

I knew exactly the incident she was referring to.

“Oh gosh, this needs to be a phone call,” I stood to go upstairs for some privacy. This call didn’t need screaming kids in the background. 

Reading my reaction, the kids and Tighe were already on edge. 

“What?!” they demanded to know.

I read both texts aloud and before leaving the room, I turned to Sam.

“Sam, who was spraying them with a hose?”

He named a name, confirming what I already knew. I nodded and bounded up the steps two at a time.

Pacing around our bedroom, I listened to her complaints again.

“Your kids seem to hate me, and I’m over it!” she yelled through the phone.

“I am so sorry!” I began. “But let me explain. First of all, they weren’t flipping you off. They were flipping off a horsefly that was on the trampoline with them. They don’t hate you! I honestly don’t think they could even pick you out of a lineup.”

We can usually barely make out their figures through the six-foot wooden privacy fence. Heck, I don’t even know if I’d recognize her if I saw her out of context. 

“And the yoga incident,” I continued, “wasn’t one of our kids. I know exactly who it was, and I’ll alert his parents immediately. I saw him spraying the hose that day and yelled at him, but didn’t realize you were outside doing yoga.”

Really, I was mad that he was wasting water, and I thought he had been spraying hose at the roofers working on the house next door. Not that that’s excusable either, but I’d convinced myself that he wasn’t intentionally spraying the guys on the roof, making it slippery and putting these poor men’s lives in danger. I hadn’t seen the water spray go over the fence behind us, too.

“Ok,” she relented, “that makes me feel better.”

We chatted for a few more minutes. I assured her that we’d have a stern conversation with the kids about using profanity and disturbing the peace and asked her to please let me know if they ever do anything that is hostile or out of line. 

“I don’t mind the profanity, I just thought it was directed at us.”

“Nope. Just a horsefly. Really, we’re not trying to raise heathens,” I implored, “but it’s just… happening.” 

Satisfied that I’d at least smoothed over the situation, we hung up, and I reported the details of the conversation to Tighe. 

“Get dressed,” he told the kids. “Go over to their front door and apologize RIGHT NOW.”

All four of them marched upstairs and really took their time getting dressed, delaying this inevitable, dreaded task. But they must have felt strength in numbers because they did it. They apologized and then they warned them about the humongous, hostile horseflies prowling the neighborhood.

Later that evening, and unrelated I’m sure, our neighbor’s husband texted Tighe and asked if we could help shoulder the burden of replacing the fence between our yards. Probably to keep out the horseflies.