My Pile of Leaves: RIP 2002

It occurred to me, just now, that soon it will be fall. With fall comes the discarded leaves of deciduous trees, littering the ground, filling the streets with browns, oranges, and reds. I always am overcome with the desire to rake said leaves into a pile, and then jump into that pile for all I am worth.
One year I cam close to realizing that dream. One year it was within my grasp, but then ripped away from me when a group of young children decided to run onto my lawn and jump in the giant pile of leaves that I'd just spent the previous two hours raking up. They just skipped from the road to my lawn. No consideration at all for what I may have been doing with the leaves. They just ran to the pile, jumped in it, threw them all around, and then left. They left, and in their wake they had destroyed my pile of leaves, and created another half hour of work for me in the process.
My heart was broken.
When I say "and then left", what I really mean is "and then I chased them out of my yard, waving my hands and using more profanity than I had ever previously used in my entire life." Little kids need to learn profanity some how, right? I think what bothered me most was that their was a parent right there, and not once did he tell his children (or whoever's children he was with) that it's not polite to run onto someone else's lawn and mess it up. They need to learn that if they want to jump in a pile of leaves, they have to go rake up leaves and create a pile themselves.
I shed a tear that day, for my pile of leaves that was no more - for my dreams that were now crushed and would never come to fruition.
My mom still makes fun of me when I stand at the window and stare down the little children making their way past my house. We all know that I am doomed to be the crazy old neighbor, whose house no one really wants to go near on Halloween (for fear that they will be eaten). At least once I am crazy, and scare neighborhood children more than I already do, I will know what caused it. I will know what event all this craziness was triggered from. It was those children - those children jumping in my leaf pile. Destroying my only goal in life that I actually stood a chance at having come true (unless I win the lottery, at which point in time I'm pretty sure that the mechanical bull thing will happen..). They crushed my spirits, and now I have been resigned to a life with no leaf piles. A life of solitude. A life where my only joy is now likely to be the thirty-five cats that will someday reside in my home.
And when I die - alone (safe for my cats) - it is more than likely that those cats will turn on me, and eat my body.
All because a handful of little kids jumped in my pile of leaves.