Dear Prudence,
My wife and I live in a residential neighborhood, and the other evening I caught our next-door neighbors’ kids (ages 8 and 10) doing something extremely unsafe. I was out in my backyard when I noticed a column of smoke rising from the neighbors’ yard. They don’t have a grill, so I rushed over to see what was happening.
I looked over the fence to find their boys had built a small fire pit in the dirt in the flowerbed about six feet from our shared fence, where they were getting ready to roast some hot dogs. I told them what they were doing was dangerous and that they needed to put out the fire. The older one said they had a hose nearby and their parents were OK with it. I called my neighbors and explained my concerns, and asked them to make the kids put the fire out. Their response was to tell me to “mind your own fucking business.” I don’t want to risk our home or anyone else’s going up if one of the kids’ fires should get out of control or an ember drifts on the wind and catches. The trouble is that my wife doesn’t want me to report the neighbors to the fire department for the sake of “not starting a war.” I think we’re past that, given their response. Please tell me I don’t need my wife’s permission to prevent a conflagration.