For a Moment, I Was a TV dad. And not a cool one.

Yep, go to commercial. For a moment I was a TV dad. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the cool dad or the quirky gay dad or the tough guy. I was the awkward dad hanging on to his youth when I had to confront the college boys next door.

Our neighborhood is surrounded by colleges and therefore full of college-aged renters. We knew this before buying the house and welcomed the activity and energy the students bring to the neighborhood. This past Friday, the boys next door had a 21st birthday party for a friend of theirs that in their words, “got a little out of hand.”

The next morning we noticed several of our bushes had been trampled over and smashed as well as a few tulips that my wife has been waiting since this time last year to see. Needless to say, she was pissed and told me I needed to go yell at them.

I was evicted from a house during college that my buddies and I rented. Knowing what I know now, I would NEVER rent my house out to a kid like me.

But, I’m a man now and I needed to confront these hooligans about our smushed shrubbery.

These guys aren’t the guys who would have intimidated me in school. The few times I’ve associated with them, they remind me a lot of me. Now I had to go scold myself from 15 years ago.

“Hey Fellas…” I said when they opened the door at 4 pm and from the looks of it, hadn’t made much of the day yet. “Sounds like you guys had a really rocking party last night. I would have totally come over but the baby had an ear infection and I may have eaten some bad edamame. So it was lights out for us pretty early.”

“Yeah, sorry about the noise.” One said. “I’m glad the cops came and broke things up. It was getting out of hand.”

“Oh, the cops came?” I asked making myself look pretty guilty. I honestly didn’t know the cops came but a few years ago when I was next door with the previous tenants and the cops came, my friend and I (the adults) were the honorary liaison between the law and the students.

“Yeah. They broke things up. Things we getting out of hand.”

“Well, the noise never bothers us and honestly we like the energy around the neighborhood but my wife is really pissed about are bushes out front. Someone must have fallen in one or stepped on it but there are two on either side of our walkway and one is half the size it should be. She’s really pissed about it. We are big fans of symmetry.” At that moment I realized I needed to shut up.

“Yeah, we like symmetry too. Sorry about the plant, man.”

They were genuinely apologetic and I think the only solution to rectify the bush situation is for me to drink a bunch of beer this weekend and fall into the other one to even them out.

This was the house we were evicted from in the mid 90’s. I think the landlord even tracked us down in our hotel during Spring Break in Florida to yell at us about something.