Don't Mess With My Cub.........

This is another story from way back when Sweet Girl was a little girl. And she HATES it when I say "Don't mess with my cub."

When her dad and I divorced, Sweet Girl and I lived in a mobile home on some property that has been in our family for a long time. Our family built a house there when my father screwed his sister out of the land aunt gave my father the land. I think I was about four years old. Then that house burned down, just like the one that burned down about a year and a half BEFORE that one. (Coincidence? I think not.)

Nurse Jane and her first husband lived there. My brother and his first wife lived there. Sweet Girl, her dad and I lived there. Then my brother and his second wife built a house there. Mom had an apartment in the basement. Then Katydid and her husband bought the house (along with the troll in the basement). Then they sold it to my niece and her husband, who still live there.

All that has nothing to do with this story. And I may have left out a relative or two living there.

The mobile home where Sweet Girl and I lived was at the top of a very steep, fairly long driveway, way back off the road at the edge of some woods. There was another mobile home at the bottom of the driveway, but we didn't own that property. No, I can't figure it out either. When we lived there, there was some pothead/druggie/drunk living in the mobile home at the bottom of the driveway. I didn't know the guy, but my brother did. He said I didn't have to worry about the guy.

For some reason that guy and his friends got into the habit of driving up my driveway, riding around the circle in the front yard, and then going back down the hill. Why? I'm sure I don't know. They didn't stay in the yard, at least not when I was there. I don't know the attraction of riding up that driveway. Maybe his car didn't have reverse in it. I don't know.

One night I was awakened from a dead sleep by a horrific noise in the front yard. A car was leaving, and I realized immediately that the noise I heard was the sound of Sweet Girl's tricycle being crushed and then dragged under a car.

I didn't even think. I grabbed my sleeping child, got in the car, and drove down the driveway. I approached his trailer from the back, where the door was open. I didn't even hesitate. I stomped into his home, down the hall, and confronted him in his own living room. I don't remember what I said, but I do remember that when we got back in the car, Sweet Girl said, "Mama, why did you holler at that man?"

I went on and on about him driving into MY yard and destroying MY child's tricycle. I informed him that he WAS going to pay for it, and he agreed, but I still kept haranguing him. Finally the guy had enough and said, nicely enough, "Why don't you just have me locked up then?"

"That's a GREAT idea!" I said, stomping back out the door.

And when I got in the car, I realized my options were limited. Either I went back up that lonely driveway to a mobile home where it was obvious that I was alone with a small child, having just pissed off a pothead/druggie/drunk, or I went somewhere else to spend the night.

Guess which one I chose?