That’s not the unbelievable part. The unbelievable part is I actually got Little Bear to fall asleep before 9:30pm tonight so here we are having a quiet night when suddenly we get a very loud knock on the door at 10:30pm. It’s her daughter all upset because she has to get up at 5am and she can hear us walking. I’m stunned and I’m just looking at her. I have my Autism emergency notice right there on the door and she is acting like we’re weirdos for not understanding how loud we are. This is a really old farmhouse that has been converted into apartments. You breathe and the floorboards creak kind of old. So I’m standing there, trying to figure out how to respond to this and suddenly she says:

“I’m just saying because you don’t want my mother up here because she’s a bitch.”

At this point I’m floored. I know her mother and I don’t think she’s a bitch. But then again I haven’t seen her in years and I don’t know her kids but still. I came really close to marching her ass down the stairs to knock on their door to tell her mother what this (pre?)teen just said to me. So as I’m debating as to what to do with this, she says almost the same thing again and then slinks back down the stairs. I think I will try to talk with her mother in the morning.

I can’t imagine what this girl will do when we have a bad night and if she plans to make this habit this will not end well. I don’t respond kindly to children bossing me around. Never have and never will. And here I was just last week finally relieved that I would finally have someone for a neighbor that gets it. Now I have to deal with contention.

I will not let this kid sneak out of her home every night to badger me about my Autistic son’s nightly ritual of pacing. And don’t think I didn’t notice that she was still fully dressed at that time of night. You mean to tell me that she took the time to get out of bed, get fully dressed, and sneak pass her mother just to tell me that she desperately needs her sleep because she needs to get up at 5am in the morning? Because I can’t see her mother allowing her to do all that if she was really the bitch this kid claims her to be if we were really causing the disturbance she says we were. What the hell is she going to do on one of our bad nights?

I’m just grateful that she didn’t wake up Little Bear with all this. If she had we ALL would have been screwed – herself included. He wouldn’t have got back to sleep and he would have been on screech from that point on. We would have all kissed a good night’s rest good bye. As it is here it is almost 4am and I’m still struggling to get myself to sleep after so many nights keeping vigil with that child of mine.

I do know that I need to speak to her mother about this, not that I really want to but I have to. Primarily for the reasons I have listed above but there is another underlying issue as well. This kid has just shown me that she is quite possibly capable of sneaking out of the home undetected. Her mother needs to know that. I also don’t think her mother would appreciate the fact that her daughter is running around threatening people with her mother’s presence and calling her a bitch either. None of that sits well with me at all.

I can honestly say this has been the second time in my life that I have felt the need to get involved with someone else’s kid like this. The first being my brother and sister-in-law’s daughter – but that’s a safety issue because she likes to set my boys off. I’m seriously worried one day she will pull that stunt when there isn’t a grown up close enough to save her and she will get hurt really bad. I never will understand the fascination some people have in setting people off, but they are out there. And it’s not safe to do that. You just never know what they’re going to do when they blow. Sure they get in trouble but you might end up hurt – or worse. It’s not funny.

What I don’t understand is if you do that to an animal you can get nailed for animal cruelty, but in most cases if you do that to another human it’s the person that blows up that gets nailed. I’m not saying the person that blew up is justified in losing their shit, but I don’t think we should be giving the bully a free pass either.

Anyway I’m derailing here. I’m not sure why exactly interacting with women set me off more often than men, but they do. Just as how interacting with my neighbor’s daughter has somehow reminded me of my niece. Somehow my brain has this all interconnected. But the kid came to my door and started out all hunched over, right up against the threshold. At first I thought there was a crisis. But then she suddenly took this semi-aggressive stance with her arms folded, like she was testing me out and looking for a fight, and was playing the victim card. I know what my response would have been if any of my sons had done this to me. But it wasn’t my kid so I’m just standing there, looking at here with my “what the hell face” and just feeling a light under current of anger – which spiked the first time she called her mother a bitch. Of all the words to use she had to use that one… my least favorite one. She could have dropped the F-bomb every other word and it wouldn’t have phased me anywhere near as much as the word bitch – and then to call her mother that of all people. Not. Cool. I’m not even sure why this one word twists me so much but it does.

At least towards the end she kind of got awkward and almost apologetic. Because I didn’t take the bait and fight with her? I honestly said next to nothing to her. I was truly that stunned by the balls this kid had. Could have been my expression or the tone I used for the few words I said which I have no idea now what they were exactly. Something along the lines of “We will try to keep it down.” I think but I know my tone had my mother’s stink eye in it. Not my stink eye but MY MOTHER’S stink eye. The one that you know this conversation has ended and if you argue with her it’s over. It never works with my boys. EVER.

All I can say is I hope that when I do try to talk to her mother that I can do so tactfully and a part of me hopes that her daughter is present when I do.