Wait, what? Or, the tale of the unnecessarily confrontational neighbors

Like probably everyone, we have good neighbors and we have not-so-good neighbors. The not-so-good neighbors have people coming and going at all hours, weekly shouting matches outside, toys spread out everywhere -- you know, the usual. We're not sure who exactly owns the home or who, exactly, is the parent of which of the five or so children.

Oh, the children.

The oldest one, a girl, is polite and not a problem. The boys are rude, foul-mouthed, and disrespectful. They range in age from probably about six or seven to maybe ten. The boys like to shout things at me and anyone in our backyard from their upstairs window. Rude things. Horrible things. personal things. They've done this to just me, me and my husband, our friends, my family, and my husband's family. We have up until now been taking the high road and just ignoring it. We didn't want to encourage it or make it escalate into anything worse, if that was possible.

Last night after an extremely long and taxing weekend entertaining out-of-town guests my husband and I were sitting out back and trying to decompress. From the window come the familiar voices. "Hey! Hey you two! Look up here! Hey! Hey girl! Hey young girl!" ("Young girl?" I guess I'll take that as a kind of compliment.) "That's an ugly outfit you're wearing!"

I pleaded with my husband with my eyes. He wasn't aware of the things that they said to me when he wasn't around. I told him. Sure, I may have been baiting him a little bit but I was just tired of it. I am a non-confrontational person 99% of the time. He's got the deep, booming voice and communication skills. I'm 5' tall, apparently young-looking, and I have a stuttering/stammering problem when I get flustered.

Our backyard is supposed to be our sanctuary. These kids have desecrated that.

The kids came running outside (they had been going in and out all night, alternating running down the alley and yelling from the window). My husband got up and told them to listen up. The kids froze. I guess they thought the young white kids were going to let them walk all over them forever. One of the adults was further down the alley and they called him over.

My husband told him that the harassment needed to stop. The man was huffy and puffing out his chest. Why? I don't know. We've never so much as had words with him. I've said hi to one of the adult ladies several times and was only met with blank stares. I don't know what we've ever done to piss any of them off. I wasn't about to start a deep, meaningful conversation and question the household's parenting skills. We were just letting them know that we weren't going to take it anymore.

"Why wasn't I told?" the guy kept interrupting.

"I'm telling you right now!" said my husband. I mean, seriously, duh.

The guy finally backed down. "Oh, well then that's cool."

And to my amazement, he (mostly calmly, which was unexpected) talked to the kids and told them to knock it off.

Is it finally over? We'll see. If those kids so much as utter a sound in my direction I'm marching my ass over there again. And if it happens one more time I'm filing harassment charges. I hope to hell it doesn't come to that.

All I'm asking is to live and let live.