There has apparently been some controversy lately in a local suburb, a suburb right next to mine, in fact, over kids playing basketball in the street.
People complain that the sound of the ball hitting the street again and again is too noisy. They say the hoops are an eyesore, and degrade property values.
I can certainly empathize with the people who find the presence of kids playing outside to be annoying.
The neighborhood kids play soccer in my yard. It's a really good yard for soccer — no trees in the middle, great turf thanks to the zoysia.
I work from home every day, and the kids are noisy, especially in the summertime when they're out of school. Sometimes their laughter carries right through a closed window.
I'm an avid gardener, and I care about my property. And the kids broke one of my little solar lights once, and once they knocked over a potted plant and broke the pot and killed the plant.
So I bought a little garden fence to protect my lights, and my plants, from errant balls.
And I let the neighborhood kids keep playing soccer in my yard.
Sometimes, when their laughter distracts me from my work, I go outside and bring them lemonade.
From time to time, I kick the ball around myself.
5 comments:
I read a few pages of the comments on the PD article. People blow my mind. PROPERTY VALUES ARE NOT THE HOLY GRAIL. It drives me insane when people rail against their neighbors enjoying the home they live in and the life they live because their whatever (kids playing, garden, yard dec, car parked in driveway, blah blah blah)might influence their property values. There are more important things in life than your perception of the resale value of your home, like, oh, kids actually being kids and people actually living their lives.
We've got some neighborhood bullies who do the same thing (hilarious to me in our modest neighborhood). I mostly laugh at them, then build more crazy garden contraptions.
When I was a kid, we ran wild in the neighborhood til dusk. That was the magic hour. If we werent home AT DUSK,there would be hell to pay! There were parks and fields to play in, we didnt have to worry about predators or lawsuits. Life was full of fun, injuries, fights and, occasionally, ticked off adults trying to enforce their values on us. We just laughed it off and went our merry way.
Times, they are achanging.
Kelly
What happened to the days when people enjoyed seeing kids playing in their neighborhood? I agree with KBO - people's values are misplaced into 'things' and 'stuff' as opposed to being focused on life and living it.
Not to sound like a broken record, but I agree with everything that's been written. If you buy a home in a subdivision, there's gonna be kids. Kids play and make noise (or they should be doing that).
All that being said, I DO agree that the big movable basketball hoops can block a narrow street if they're completely rolled out into the street. The solution is to put them on the driveway. We had a hoop at the side of ours for many years. It killed some of the grass, but oh well.
You are a nice neighbor to let the kids play in your yard. I think it is nice that the kids are getting out to play rather than being shuttled from activity to activity.
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