Makin' friends

Our front yard is wavy. Not bumpy, but huge rolling swells, as if the contractors wanted to simulate rolling glacial hills to stave off potential mountain-envy in the citizenry. My daughter is undeterred and has taken to punting her soccer ball from one valley to the next, racing up and down the swells like Laura Ingalls with cleats. And a rabid wolverine after her.

She occasionally cajoles her dad into passing with her on the relatively flat (but usually muddy) edges of the communal yard. As they had their fun last weekend, our neighbor came out and informed us -- apparently without malice, but with characteristic Dutch bluntness -- that the reason they'd bothered with the rolling front yard was to keep people from playing football on the lawn. They continued their game nonetheless; no windows were broken, and I think the neighbor's son might even have joined in.

N.B.: I have subsequently been corrected by my dear husband that our neighbor indicated that the point of the swells was to keep the big high school kids out, sort of like those big nails on the eaves of buildings intended to keep the pigeons off. That's where my sardonic humor gets me... in trouble with the neighbors again.