We need to talk about boundaries. Specifically, we need to talk about parents who refuse to teach them and the glorious, unhinged, and frankly heroic measures we are forced to take as a result. This is a story about a woman, a demon mask, and the two little Peeping Toms who finally learned their lesson.
Our narrator is a 29-year-old woman who, like many of us, enjoys a little sunshine. Her bedroom window faces the front, so she keeps the blinds half-open for her cats. She also, like any normal human, sometimes walks through her own private bedroom in her underwear. This is not a crime. This is her home.
The problem? Her neighbor’s seven-year-old twin boys. They have, for months, been treating her private bedroom window like a TV screen. And we’re not talking a glance from the sidewalk. We are talking “faces and hands completely pressed up against the window looking in.”
It’s a full-blown peeping operation, and they’ve been doing it daily. It started, she assumes, with them looking at her cats, but it has now escalated into a “game.” When they see her, they run back home laughing.
So, what has our hero done? She did all the normal, adult things. She went outside and asked the kids directly to please stop. They just laughed and ran away. So, she did the next adult thing: she went to the parents. She has spoken to them multiple times.
And this, friends, is where the story goes from “annoying” to “enraging.” The parents’ response to their children systematically harassing their neighbor? “They’re just kids being kids.” And then, the classic, victim-blaming cherry on this garbage sundae: “if you don’t want someone looking in your window just keep it closed.”
I’m sorry, what? She has to live in a dark cave, in her own home, because you refuse to parent your twin terrors? Because you think it’s “kinda f**ked up” to, you know, not teach your kids to peek into a strange woman’s bedroom? The logic is staggering.
This has been going on for months. Daily. Until last week. Our narrator, having been pushed to the brink, saw the terrifying demon mask her boyfriend wore for Halloween. And an idea was born. A beautiful, evil, and absolutely necessary idea.
She didn’t just half-azz this. She committed. She put on the mask and stood next to her window, waiting. For almost 20 minutes, she waited. She waited for the inevitable.
She heard the footsteps. She waited until both kids had their noses pressed up against the glass. The trap was set.
And then, she sprang. She jumped out, mask at their eye level, and let out the “deepest and loudest roar” she possibly could.
I am giving this a standing ovation. This is performance art. The kids, who had never in their lives faced a single consequence, have now met one. In demon form. They ran home “screaming and crying,” and I have never heard a sweeter sound.
Of course, “just minutes later,” the mother was at the door, calling the narrator a “monster” for scaring her children. The same mother who thought daily harassment was just “kids being kids.”
And our hero’s response? It was perfect. It was cold. It was the only language this woman understands. “I do what I want in my own house, and if her kids don’t want to see that they should stay away from my window.” Mic. Drop.
It’s been a full week, and she says the kids haven’t even stepped foot on her lawn. She’s not sure if they’re “traumatised” or if the parents finally told them to stop. Honestly? Who cares. It worked.
She’s not the ahole. She’s a hero. She did the parenting those parents refused to do. She’s not a monster; she’s a problem-solver who just happens to own a demon mask.
Love it!