{"id":53916,"date":"2011-07-30T00:04:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-30T04:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/53916\/children-essence-human-aggresion-scaring-upstairs-neighbors\/"},"modified":"2011-07-30T00:04:35","modified_gmt":"2011-07-30T04:04:35","slug":"children-essence-human-aggresion-scaring-upstairs-neighbors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/53916\/children-essence-human-aggresion-scaring-upstairs-neighbors\/","title":{"rendered":"Children Are the Essence of Human Aggresion; Scaring My New Upstairs Neighbors"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the sun set on this beautiful summer evening, I went into MySpaceLand in search of a blog I wrote back in August of 2009.\u00a0 I was able to pin it down to a specific date because I found the video I made to accompany it.\u00a0 August 12th, 2009.\u00a0 It\u2019s been several years since MySpace allowed 3rd party apps to search your blogs for specific content, but even after that, I have had some success using Google to find links to old MySpace blogs of mine.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a matter of finding the right search terms.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"\"I don\u2019t think I could be any more specific than \u201cMy Little Pony Joko Barry MySpace Blog\u201d\u2026 that should have gotten it\u2026 but it didn\u2019t.\u00a0 I found links to blogs within a few weeks of the one I was looking for, but that goddamn site has even taken away the \u201cprevious blog\u201d and \u201cnext blog\u201d functions\u2026. Making it darn near impossible to get at content one has created in years past.\u00a0 I feel like my past creativity has been taken hostage by a negligent lack of navigation tools!<\/font><\/p>\n

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Ironically, I found links to bulletins within the last year on FriendBurst using those search terms.\u00a0 This place is much more archive friendly.\u00a0 I hope that never goes away.\u00a0 This video doesn’t make a whole lot of sense without the story that accompanies it; suffice to say, it involved children as neighbors.
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I was looking for that blog to share some of my humorous musings from a couple years back about living downstairs from two annoying, loud, pre-pubescent girls.\u00a0 Sugar and spice and everything nice?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 Not in this century.<\/font><\/p>\n

This came up because today, I got new upstairs neighbors.\u00a0 I live in the lower level of a house that was never initially intended to be a duplex.\u00a0 My new neighbors include two girls.\u00a0 I am guessing from the brief glimpse I got of one that she is about 8 years old; from the loud shrieks of the other as they rambled about their new home upstairs from me, the other is probably 3 or 4.<\/font><\/p>\n

Do I dislike children?\u00a0\u00a0 Of course not.\u00a0 They can be quite wonderful.\u00a0 I have two nephews who are the coolest boys in the whole world\u2026 when they let themselves be.\u00a0 As sometimes happens, children too often see themselves as being inherently in conflict with adults simply because we are grownups and they are kids; it\u2019s almost like we are two similar, yet opposing, species.<\/font><\/p>\n

Here is my nephew, Dylan, from 3 years ago, in his YouTube debut…<\/p>\n

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I thought of this last night as I voluntarily took a daycare assignment.\u00a0 I was at a 12-step meeting in the basement of a church.\u00a0 This meeting offered child care, wherein adults could bring their kids, who went off into another room of the church, chaperoned in 15 minute increments by volunteers from the group.\u00a0 Childcare at AA meetings is a nice feature; it\u2019s hard for Mom or Dad to pay attention to the message if they\u2019re pre-occupied with minding unruly children.<\/p>\n

The format for volunteering to take care of the brats was simple.\u00a0 Cards with 15 minute periods of the 90 minute meeting were placed on the center table, and whoever wanted to volunteer, simply picked up one of these cards.\u00a0 I was attending this meeting with my sponsor, who has occasionally noted that I haven\u2019t been too big on the whole \u201cservice\u201d part of the 12-step tradition.\u00a0 For example, I haven\u2019t found a sponsee off my own yet.\u00a0 At this point in my\u00a0 program, I \u201cshould\u201d be sponsoring a newcomer by now.\u00a0 I\u2019ll admit, I picked up one of these childcare timeslots to show my sponsor I am willing to be of service.<\/p>\n

Oh. My. God.\u00a0 It was one of the longest 15 minutes of my life.<\/p>\n

\"\"The boy was probably about 8.\u00a0 The girl was maybe 11.\u00a0 Two children to chaperone.\u00a0 No biggie, right?\u00a0 I was lucky to get out of there without them hurting themselves, each other, myself or the church room we were in.\u00a0 All the toys laid out were not for playing with, no, instead, they seemed to think they were for using to attack each other with or throw about the room.<\/p>\n

After a few minutes of, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think you should be doing that!\u201d, I came up with an idea for how to channel their aggression.\u00a0 Sports!\u00a0 See, I walked into the room thinking I could engage them in fun verbal and mental games, of which I know many.\u00a0 The first thing I asked when left alone with these two monsters was enthusiastically, \u201cHey kids, wanna play a game?\u201d They answered quite bluntly, \u201cNO!\u201d<\/p>\n

I managed to turn their self-discovered game of throwing toys at each other as hard as they possibly could (thank god kids have bad aim otherwise there would have been stitches at the ER in this story) into toy baseball\u2026with me as the pitcher.\u00a0 They took the longest block of wood out of the block set (about 12\u201d long) and used it as a bat.\u00a0 I threw the stuffed animal at them with relatively decent speed and they tried to hit it.\u00a0 I told them what the result was after they smacked the stuffed bear, dog or dinosaur into submission.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sociological analyses of sports often refer to them being replacements for our natural human desire for aggression.\u00a0 When our city-states of Cleveland and Pittsburg square off on the football field, it replaces what would have been in times past\u00a0 actual warfare.\u00a0 This is a very true analysis which I demonstrated by channeling aggression in it\u2019s purest form (kids versus adults in the ultimate \u2018substitute teacher\u2019 situation; 15 minutes at an AA hall) into a sporting game.<\/p>\n

Now, I won\u2019t be playing games with the new girls upstairs.\u00a0 How do I prevent them from annoying me, their downstairs neighbor?\u00a0 If I am friendly with them, I know what will happen.\u00a0 I will be sitting at my computer, with the warm summer air coming in from the open window 5 feet to my left, and they will appear, asking what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n

No, it is best that I am, in their minds, the scary downstairs troll who they don\u2019t want to have anything to do with.\u00a0 That would suit me fine.<\/p>\n

Tonight, as the new upstairs tenants were passing by the side of the house we share, the older girl misinterpreted my bedroom window.\u00a0 As the adults passed, she lingered at the ground-level window, which she could pass through with just a little stoop.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a neat little door!\u201d she exclaimed with wonder, not seeing me through the curtains on the other side of the window.<\/p>\n

\u201cIT\u2019S NOT A DOOR!\u201d I yelled dramatically, \u201cIT\u2019S A WINDOW! AND SOMEONE LIVES DOWN HERE!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The little girl scampered off, catching up to her parents, frightened by the scary basement troll behind the curtains.<\/p>\n

Good! That initial frightening impression should buy me a couple weeks of peace before they appear at my window asking \u201cWhatchya doin?\u201d<\/p>\n

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As the sun set on this beautiful summer evening, I went into MySpaceLand in search of a blog I wrote back in August of 2009.\u00a0 I was able to pin it down to a specific date because I found the video I made to accompany it.\u00a0 August 12th, 2009.\u00a0 It\u2019s been several years since MySpace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,10,11],"tags":[3951,81,69,1984],"class_list":["post-53916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-life","category-people","tag-basement-troll","tag-joko","tag-life-2","tag-neighbors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}