“I Won”: Woman Puts A Stop To Neighbor's Kids Trashing The Sidewalk By Beating Them At Their Game

Revenge is a dish served cold, but not every tale of getting even needs to be “The Count of Monte Cristo,” sometimes a simple plan will do. This was exactly the case for a woman who shared her simple, yet effective way to get back at littering neighbors and clean up her neighborhood at the same time.

The parents would simply ignore any and all requests to tell their children to stop throwing assorted garbage, clothes, and other random items into the sidewalk. So after trying and exhausting all other options, OP decided to take action with a little mix of revenge and cleaning up.

While we can all applaud OP’s method of enacting vengeance on behalf of the neighborhood, there is still the unanswered question of why exactly the children in that house were just launching “regular” items over the fence. Certainly, as a child, it can be fun to throw things, and taking out the trash is boring. Sort of like shoving everything under the bed, it’s easy to see how a kid would see “throw it over the fence” as a legitimate means to solve a “problem.” There is another psychological factor at play, the fence. Because the thrower is invisible, they might feel like they can truly get away with it, since they do not have to face the mess, nor the people who might be, rightfully, angry about litter.

However, this still does not explain why they might throw away their own, presumably functional toys, such as the tricycle. While this could be a masterful gambit to get their parents to buy a new one, there is no real indication that they needed a new one. This is just as true for the raincoat and other items. Certainly, children will sometimes break things in an effort to get back at their parents or get attention from them, but there does not seem to be any indication that the parents had any idea that their offspring were playing a very one-sided game of volleyball with the pavement.

The silver lining for the family is that, hopefully, the kids learn a valuable lesson about preserving the environment and that what comes around goes around. Being yelled at and having a tricycle thrown back at you is not nearly as bad as doing something similar as an adult and facing real consequences. On a positive note, OP reported that the trash-throwing had ceased, meaning that the kids had perhaps learned their lesson. Since the return throw was followed by a yelled command, hopefully, the children themselves internalized the lesson and weren’t just following a new set of commands from their parents.

While part of the appeal of this story is the revenge enacted upon the litterers, it’s worth pointing out that OP’s actions actually barely meet the requirements. She just returns the trash and assorted items to the yard they presumably already were in. This does, of course, still provide her community with an important service, but it’s not like the annoying neighbors have “learned” their lesson since it appears that the adults, the primary decision-makers, had little to no idea that OP was actually doing anything at all.

So the resonance from many of the readers may have actually been a result of a very human demand for justice. Certainly, revenge can be seen as an element of justice, as a wrong-doer gets punished for doing wrong. It is important to distinguish between the idea of punishment and revenge, as the former is more neutral, something that must happen, while the latter is often a result of anger and may not be proportional to the “crime.” That being said, seeing someone do “wrong” and hurt others for an extended period of time, without repercussions can be psychologically draining. People do have an inherent sense of justice, so to see someone “get away with it” can actually be a cause of some symptoms reminiscent of PTSD. So that is the final silver lining for OP, as she successfully took revenge and solved a neighborhood issue in one fell throw of a tricycle.