It’s 12:45 and I’m reminded why I’m more than slightly annoyed at college students living on a residential block. MY residential block. The same street in which, twenty years ago, my friends and I had too much respect to be playing midnight football in the street and yelling, yes yelling, at each other the whole time. Sure, we might have been out, in the back yard, or walking up to the sportsbar, but not this, partially because my mom would have been on me in a second.

That’s it, though: these kids are away from home for the first time, so they’ve got drinks for the big games, no spare time to shovel the front walk, broken promises to a girlscout selling cookies, cars parked in the front lawn and a constant parking lot outside, girls doing the walk of shame in front of kids on the bus stop, entire rolls of carpeting in the garbage, and now this.

With ONE college house on our block, we have the worst neighbors we’ve ever had in the neighborhood. I do not want to imagine what half a block full of college students could accomplish while they are not being policed by their ultra-conservative campus leaders, sound asleep at home in Brookfield. Those kids might have moms who wouldn’t allow this kind of behavior in their own front yards, too, but what better reason to act the fool while finally escaping home.

It’s 1am and they’re done, at least for now. I know it could be worse. I don’t think they are criminal types. They’re just lazy, irresponsible college kids, and, like I said, I can’t really imagine a block full of them, unless, of course, I wake up at age 25. But that’s probably not going to happen, just like WLC probably isn’t going to do anything about some of their students making the college look bad in the neighborhood it’s gotten used to ignoring.

Thinking about my dad rather than my mom, he would have been out there yelling at the "turkeys" immediately. I'd seen him do that kind of thing all through the 1980s in our old neighborhood, an area where one might expect this sort of behavior. But I'm more of a writer than a fighter, mostly because my dad's methods resulted in occasional random assaults on our house or garage.

My goal is to let Wisconsin Lutheran College know that a home all of the neighbors believe is housing its students is in need of reform. We'd like to let Chi Hang Kuok know that his renters are giving him a bad name. We'd like to let all the generous companies that donate money to the college that certain values are optional. Most of all, we'd like to let their moms know that their kids are behaving this way in a real neighborhood, not in some campus dorm, and not on a block littered top to bottom with college kids.

With a house for sale down the block, we are very concerned. Neglect we can handle. We've always had a few neighbors unwilling to beautify the block. But if we get more college kids and more active disregard for what should be obvious rules, I will become my father and intimidate the hell out of them in the streets at 12:30am because it seems to me that their moms haven't done the job.