I Think I May Have Offended Conspiracy Guy

My neighbor two houses over is a stay-at-home dad and amateur kook I call Conspiracy Guy. His two little girls, aka My Foster Children, are knocking on our door or roaming in our yard several times a week. I (almost) always welcome them with open arms because they keep Hank entertained. They are mostly past the age where they spill things and wet their pants, so this arrangement works fine, even if they always arrive starving. They also answer my every instruction or correction with, "Why?" Which I do not find charming in a child unless its mine and then it's a sign of burgeoning critical reasoning abilities.

Hank is big enough now that I'll let him run across the yards to their house and knock on their door to see if they want to come out and play. I'll stand on the porch and watch him go and come back. I always tell him, "Don't go into their house, just ask them to come play outside or at your house." Well it isn't that I'm dead set against his being in their house. It's just a combination of a few things: he hasn't been invited over; I have never stepped more than a few feet into their house and don't know that they don't have loaded guns lying around, or stacks of John Birch Society literature; and I just don't know how well he would be supervised over there. He is three and I am territorial over him.

Well, I don't know what he may have said at their doorstep about "I'm not supposed to come inside" or something, but lately the little girls have taken to ringing our doorbell and then refusing to enter. They want Hank to come out, but they protest, loudly, "We're not allowed to come inside!" Or if one of them does enter the dreaded house, her sister calls her back as though she's on the edge of a volcano. They have been coming over since the littlest one was two (yes, a two year-old was allowed to wander around supervised by her four year-old sister and to go to the neighbor's to "play"), so this is a new development. And yesterday their dad kinda gave me the stink eye when I was talking to another neighbor at my front door.

They have been playing outside a lot with one of the Mystery Daughters, which is odd 'cause that girl is nine, and the foster children are 4 and 6.

Oh Conspiracy Guy, how hath I offended thee? I canst not tell, but I shall have to fry thy fish another day.

Anyway, that's what's good in the hood.