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Home › Articles › Fiction/Opinion/Essays/Humor › The Bad Neighbor Kid

The Bad Neighbor Kid

By Teri Brown

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I knew it the minute I saw her. She stood there like a bird of prey and watched us move in our furniture. I judged her to be about 10; it was hard for me to tell because my children were so much younger. It didn't matter that she was pretty or that she smiled sweetly at me. I knew her for what she was. Yup, she was the bad neighbor kid.

Every neighborhood has one. You could live in an area with million dollar mansions or in a third floor walkup. They're everywhere. They're the ones who can walk up to a group of children playing peacefully and within minutes Billy, Bobbie and Sue scatter, wailing in the voice that makes parents everywhere long for fingernails on chalkboards.

Lemonade Stand I'm sure you can remember the bad neighbor kid from your childhood: the kid that drank all your lemonade without paying; the one who could throw rocks around corners like heat seeking missiles, always hitting their mark; a kid whose glance, even from half a block away, could send your bike crashing to the ground.

My heart dropped because where there's a bad neighbor kid, there's a bad neighbor kid mom. In my experience there are two different types of bad neighbor kid moms: the perpetually embarrassed mom, who can't quite believe it's happened to her, and the smug, snooty mom who believes her child is just misunderstood. I wondered which this girl's mom would turn out to be.

I didn't have to wait long to find out. The very next day, the mom brought over some brownies and proceeded to regale me with tales of how horrible the rest of children in the neighborhood were. While she talked, her daughter sized up my kids with the appetite of a starving wolf. Then it came, the question that struck fear into the bravest mother's heart:

"You wanna' go outside and play?"

Her mother gave me a sweet smile. "Nikki's so good with younger kids."

I smiled back weakly, watching my children head out the door, lambs to the slaughter.

She talked for a bit longer while I nodded and smiled. I was almost relieved when it came. The wail. I winced.

Heading out the door, we encountered three extremely muddy children. The mom didn't even bother to wait for the story. She sent me one withering glance and whisked off with her triumphant daughter.

Next, we got to meet the bad neighbor kid's best friend. The best friend is almost as bad as the bad neighbor kid herself. He or she is a bad neighbor kid apprentice, sort of like the first runner up in the Miss America contest. If, for any reason, the bad neighbor kid is unable to fulfill her duties the best friend is there to step in. The best friend's role is limited. Her main job is to laugh, "Huh, huh, huh," say things like, "They started it," and look at the bad neighbor kid in admiration for all her incarnate badness.

It was an interesting summer. My kids learned to say things like "Duuudde" and "What (big long pause here) ever." My 7-year-old daughter learned to walk around singing the theme song to Titanic and to heave deep longing sighs. I can't even count the times they came running home crying at the hands of the bad neighbor kid. Desperate, I learned to hurl the kids into the car so fast they began to feel like shotputs. We spent hours at the library. Avoiding the bad neighbor kid, her mother and her friend became a way of life. My husband put an end to it when he noticed how pale the kids were becoming and realized I was only letting them out to play after the sun went down. I was actually kind of relieved. My children are smart and weren't buying the fact that we were really vampires and could only go out at night.

When we came out of our self-imposed exile I discovered a wonderful thing. The bad neighbor kid had turned eleven and decided that she was now the bad neighbor teen. All of a sudden her pants were 10 sizes too big and her shirts were 10 sizes too small. She wore lipstick that made her look as if someone had just smacked her in the mouth and what used to be an ordinary hand had morphed into a large boom box that emitted some of the most horrifying sounds known to man. Best of all, now that she was the bad neighborhood teen, she barely deigned to notice my kids except to sneer and turn up her nose. I felt almost as good as if I had awakened to see a "For Sale" sign in their yard.

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