Yesterday in the Garden

After a trip on Thursday to the big box home store for the sale-priced power washer, I spent the entire day Friday cleaning the patio. I started before the neighbors were all out of bed and I washed inch by inch until the whole patio was shining in the late afternoon sun.
Exhausted, but thoroughly pleased with my perseverance in completing this daunting task, I just had to get brother dear to come over and unscrew the hose from the machine. When he put it on, he didn't know his own strength. By dark, everything was back in place. Chiminea, chairs, bromeliad to schefelera, all was in good order.
I crawled into bed to read around ten and was awakened a few minutes after midnight by my light sleeping mother. "There's someone on the patio," was how she woke me. Sure enough there was. She had been up long enough to determine that this person was terribly upset, crying and moaning. He had banged around in rage and was sitting in a chair crying. When I called out through the bolted door, he left immediately. This was in all likelihood one of the neighborhood underage drinkers from a party down the block, who was so drunk that he had no idea where he was.
Daylight revealed that he had wrenched open our back gate with such force that he bent the forged iron arm of the gate latch. He had turned over the patio table unpotting plants in the process, and had even left his shoe print on the back door when he kicked it.
The scariest part of this is not that he frightened two old women in the middle of the night. It's what might have happened if this kid had left his party and wandered into the yard of someone with a male head of household armed with deadly force to defend his property.
This is Texas after all, home of Joe Horn defender not just of his home, but the neighbors. I am a high school teacher, so I saw a kid who was drunk and stupid. But many in this area would have seen an intruder whose behavior was erratic enough to be interpreted as menacing. I have long been concerned with kids drinking and driving, but now I have a new fear for what might result when kids lose their way.