A couple months ago, I’m sitting here on the internet next to the big window that looks out onto the street and I notice a young guy walking in strange circles out in the street, directly in front of my house. I stand up to watch as he walks towards my neighbor’s bushes. I find out later that he’s put his bike there. And by his bike, I mean the bike that he attempted to steal from my neighbor’s back deck, but couldn’t because the pedal/chain/something was messed up on it. (I found all this out later in the day.) Then he walks to another neighbor’s front door, the one directly across the street from me. He roots around in the little container on their porch that they throw cigarette butts into. He finds one that isn’t completely depleted and lights it up. Eww.
Then he’s back in the street, wandering around in an odd way. And continues up the street, looking on other porches and eventually disappearing between two of the houses, into the back. So I get dressed and start casually strolling the neighborhood, wondering where he’s went. I spent 30 minutes, walking around and hanging out on my porch, waiting for him to reemerge, but he never did. I was convinced he’d broken into someone’s house, but I guess he just left and I missed him.
A couple weeks ago, he starts coming back almost every day. Instead of stealing bikes and wandering the neighborhood, he walks directly to the neighbor’s house across the street, finds a few cigarette butts, pockets and few, lights one up and walks away. While that’s pretty disgusting, he’s no longer acting high like that first day.
What I really want to do is buy some of those exploding cigarette loads and put them in the butts on my neighbor’s porch. That’d be hilarious to watch him light up and KABLOOM! Maybe I could get a cigarette and leave about an inch of tobacco on it, so it looks like the most appealing one in there so he’s sure to take it. Even if I don’t get to see it blow up as he lights up, it’d still be hilarious to think that it’ll happen to him at some point in the day.
Should I really do this though? He’s just a guy looking for a smoke. Is it wrong to set off explosives in a stranger’s face? Is it legal even? I mean, they’re just a prank item, something I used to occasionally do to friends of mine in school and at work as a teenager. They can’t actually hurt you. It seems kind of cruel do to do a stranger, though. On the other hand, he is stealing from their porch. But he’s just stealing trash. But he did try to steal a bike! Even if that might be purely circumstantial and he was just walking up to a bike that someone else had attempted to steal earlier that morning. Oh, the decisions I have to make…
