I’m one of those people. The people that are annoying. The people that don’t want you walking across their lawn. The ones that threaten loudly to call the police about trespassing (but never do). I have a theory about this. I was one of those kids that hiked across a lot of lawns. As a matter of fact, there were about 3 lawns I hiked through every single day I was in middle school since it cut about a quarter mile off of my walk. Granted I had to cut straight through the area between two houses and I didn’t do it when there was someone in the driving (a lot of 12-year-olds that are alone don’t usually have that brazen of an attitude to flaunt it in front of authority.

My teenage years however gave me lots of time to get yelled at for cutting through lawns. Once we destroyed a guy’s mailbox in retaliation for yelling at us one night. It was beaten into me. Though I flaunted authority and didn’t care even going so far to save 15 steps I would cross someone’s lawn. Now I’m an adult. I am the authority.

I’m not one of the anal-retentive people with immaculate lawns, far from it. I take care of it as little as I need to, and I prefer it that way. I’m sure my neighbors would love it if I was like my grandfather. He’s one of the lawn hobbyists that mows his lawn more than once a week. I would almost imagine if it was feasible he would take out scissors and trim it all by hand. Though if he did it would be too long where he started and it would never end. I think because of that I’ll never be that way.

But here I am protective of my space. Space that I have intruded upon others for. Maybe that makes me selfish. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite. Possibly though I am just a human being who wants to be left alone. Whatever it is sometimes I don’t want to deal with it. At least though I’ve come full circle and I bet half those people whose lawns I did cut across were just like me as a kid.