I’m 35, my son Nick is eight, and this winter our neighborhood learned a loud lesson about boundaries.
Nick loved building snowmen—every day after school, always in the same corner of our front yard. He named them, talked to them, and insisted they didn’t care what he looked like. I loved watching him. What I didn’t love were the tire tracks.
Our neighbor, Mr. Streeter, had a habit of cutting across our lawn when he pulled into his driveway. One afternoon, Nick came inside quietly and told me Mr. Streeter had run over one of his snowmen—looked right at it, then drove on.
I asked Mr. Streeter to stop. I explained it was upsetting my son and that it was our lawn. He shrugged. “It’s just snow. Kids cry. They get over it.”
He kept doing it. Over and over.
Then one day, Nick came inside calmer than usual. “You don’t have to talk to him anymore,” he said. “I have a plan.”
The next afternoon, Nick built a “special” snowman right at the edge of the yard—over the fire hydrant that sat on our property line.
That evening, we heard a crunch, a metal shriek, and yelling.
Mr. Streeter’s car was wrapped around the hydrant, which had snapped open and was blasting water everywhere. His tires were fully on our lawn.
When he stormed to our door accusing us, I calmly pointed out that he could only hit the hydrant if he’d been driving on our grass—something I’d repeatedly asked him not to do. The police agreed. He was fined for damaging city property and flooding the street.
Nick asked me later if he’d done a bad thing.
“You did a clever thing,” I told him. “And a risky one. Next time, tell me first.”
From that day on, Mr. Streeter never drove over our lawn again. He doesn’t wave, but he turns very carefully now—both tires firmly on his own driveway.