My neighborhood has been overrun with nitwits in puffy coats. Alas, alas, a high school in another neighborhood is being remodeled from the ground up, and while this is taking place the school’s students are being temporarily housed at a closed school in Wallingford. The remodel is going on its second and final year. In the meantime, this quiet neighborhood has been subjected to boom-boom cars, rampant littering, and general idiocy. The resident stroller mamas and elderly live in terror.

Before you start stabbing me with the accusatory finger of impending curmudgeondom, let me assure you that I did not like high schoolers when I was in high school. Ooh er, angry loner, I can hear you, mocking me. Well, yes, good call. I was an angry loner. But I also had a sense of awareness that extended beyond my own body. I knew to stand near the wall, rather than in the center of the hallway. At sixteen, I found chills running down my spine whenever one of my classmates let out a shriek or was incapable of speaking in an indoor voice, especially if other, non-school-affiliated adults were around. This is making us all look bad, I thought to myself.

The ironicaltastic part of all of this is that I thought I would grow out of this hatred. I was told as a younger person that when people get older they “mellow out” and I thought this meant that the urge to bang people’s heads into their lockers just because they said the word “EEEWWWW,” sixteen times before first period English started (when some of us were good and hung over), in regards to God knows what, in a shrill tone that would make a constipated fruitbat’s head explode, would, you know, go away.

Don’t get me wrong. I no longer feel the white-hot fury I did when I was younger when I see these puffy-coated nitwits scurrying around my neighborhood, busily hooting and throwing gum wrappers on the sidewalks. (Not that there’s anything wrong, either, with white-hot fury. When I was in the sixth grade I beat a boy up for throwing an empty soda can into my yard. Well, it wasn’t so much “beat up” as “watched him throw the can into my yard, walked over to him, and then pulled up sharply on the seat of his bike that he was currently straddling, until it connected.” WHEN YOU LITTER THE GIANT BLOATED HEAD OF JOHN TRAVOLTA CRIES.)

Where was I? Yes, so anyway, I don’t feel furious with the little twits, just mostly irritated. And I have discovered that something interesting has changed in the ten years that I’ve been out of high school: I am now invisible to high schoolers. I am clearly Just Another Adult. It is uncanny and almost like a super power. This is good, because you don’t get jeered at and have your things knocked out of your hands anymore, but it’s also bad because their lack of awareness can really interfere with your day.

Last week my sister Morgan and I were having a ramble around town and accidentally managed to end up back in my neighborhood around two-thirty, the time at which all hell breaks loose and the afternoon sugar high commences, abetted by the newly-remodeled Chevron a block from the school. (“Welcome back, students!!!” read the sign earlier this month.) A youth was standing in the middle of the sidewalk gesturing at some other youths across the street. “You’re blocking the sidewalk,” I said to him levelly, as I pushed the strolly around him.

“What? Me?” he shouted.

“Yes, you,” said Morgan, over her shoulder.

He came ambling after us. “Excuse me!” he shouted. “EXCUUUSE ME!” We ignored him.

“I don’t think that was a sincere apology,” I said to Morgan.

It happened again yesterday. Foolishly, I was out in the middle of the afternoon again. I was making for the library, in front of which stands the nearest city bus stop to the high school. A horde of students were standing in front of the bus stop, causing most adults to walk into the street to continue on around them. In the middle of the crowd, two students, a boy and a girl, were locked in a mating ritual. “Excuse me!” I said, trying to get the strolly through the clot of kids. Without looking around, the boy and girl continued viciously punching each other and began moving slowly to one side without really making room for a safe passage. “Excuse me!” I tried again, and added, “damn” under my breath. You know, “dayum,” like you cannot believe the stupid that is being perpetrated in front of you.

“We were moving out of the way MA’AM!” shouted the girl, as if it were obvious that every courtesy was being extended toward all passersby. I finally made my way into the library, where I saw the librarian and desk clerks looking through the windows onto the bus stop with horror, as they probably do every day. One of the clerks had a phone receiver in hand, a finger on the other hand poised over the “9,” as he probably does every day, as the violence and volume outside escalated.

So, I have learned that this is the reaction you get if you dare to interfere with their weird little tribe in any way. The lesson, of course, is not to muck around Wallingford after ten, the point at which many of them get bored of being in school and decided to catch a bus and “totally go to the mall.” The neighborhood becomes safe again after about three-thirty.

Shine on, you little hosebags. Gradgeate and get the fuck out of my ‘hood.