Of: how did you respond to "get off my lawn" when younger?

I'm not even 30 but I work on a college campus and I already am dropping "Back in my day" on a semi-regular basis

After an ice storm back in the late 70s, some friends of mine gathered branches that had come down.  Then used said  branches, to spell my name in the front yard of our neighborhood's "get off my lawn" guy.

In my neighborhood growing up there were parts of the lawn in front of your house that were the property of the neighbors house. My dad and I one day were playing catch and I was on my Scottish lady neighbors lawn part. She came out and scolded ua. Granted my dad cut her grass and shoveled her snow for free.

He decided to not cut it for a couple weeks. She angrily came over and said “Frank why haven’t you cut my grass” he said “well you cared more about it than I did so I thought you’d do it”

In hindsight I wish he said “I got off your lawn”

Yes Sir.

Yes Ma'am.

Me then: "Fuck you, old man! You want some?

Me today: "Fuck you, you little punk. You want some?"

A friends dad was always mad at him for something or another.  One time his dad was real mad at him, so he asked us to do donuts in his yard late one night for revenge on his dad.  I guess his dad was one of those guys who spent an inordinate amount of time to get a perfect yard.

so we did it, one night after it rained, cuz we were asshole 16 year olds.

I've been feeling like people should get off my lawn since before I had to shave.

I just tell kids my lawn has bed bugs and they'll end up infecting their whole house. That usually works.

If not, I'll just tell Siri to turn on the sprinklers.

growing up (or in lately) nobody has ever told me to get off their lawn, and i've followed suit, with respect to my lawn - which i do mow and care for/about...but in the end, it is just... grass

The baby boomers are the worst generation in American history, and it’s not close. I never cared what they thought. 

Got off the lawn.  They were armed and properly trained.  They'd seen shit.

There was this old guy who yelled at us all the time for riding our bikes on the very corner of his lawn.  He eventually put a big rock on that corner so that we would not cross over into his grass. 

One night when it was dark after a long neighborhood game of hide and seek, we went into his yard and stole his rock so we could cut through his yard when riding our bikes.

I can still here his voice 35 years later yelling at us and saying "damn kids get off my lawn!"

In Soviet Russia, lawn gets off you!

There was a time when lawns were meant to be walked on, as opposed to just looking like the owners wanted to enter them into a beauty contest.  No one dreamed of walking a half mile out of the way to avoid setting foot on grass.  Especially not when walking distances was part of the day.  Us little kids in the 60s walked to and from elementary school, there were far fewer buses as most had a school nearby.... and we all walked through everyone's lawn to get there.  As the suburbs grew, 70s, yeah we started to get yelled at for walking on someone's lawn, but these neighbors were the exception.  These neighbors would sometimes find their flower beds trampled. 

When my mother in law is really passed off she says “Oh Go Home”

I looked at them incredulously, paused, pulled down my zipper and pissed on it.  

September 1984. Junior at Rockford High School. Cross Country practice that took us downtown and up Prospect St, where it then made a 90 degree turn onto W. Prospect St. We were headed to Summit Ave, and over to what was then Pitch's apple orchard for an apple fight before continuing up to 12 Mile and then back to Wolverine Blvd back to the high school.

Thanks to Google Maps, this photo is exactly how I remember this corner property looking - scraggly pines and not much actual grass in the yard. I see the owners placed a rock in the pathway where apparently all of the neighborhood kids, including the entire CC team, would cut through their yard. It is my guess that every neighborhood kid for generations cut the same corner.

I remember being initially startled by an older woman coming out onto the porch to yell at all of us for cutting through her property, but everything soon turned to laughter as a few of the guys mocked her in her own voice, "Don't you ever cut through my property again! This is private property! I'll call the police next time!" A few of the guys behind me apologized for the rest of us and we all kept running.

She called our coach back at the high school while we were still out on the run, and we all got a stern scolding for being inconsiderate when we got back - and the same guys also mocked him under their breaths while the rest of us snickered. Unfortunately, that ended our impromptu apple fights at the apple orchard, as we never ran that loop or route ever again.

Now a days people don't really care about their lawns. My lawn is half weeds and I don't care if the neighborhood kids walk on it. Back in the 60s those old men, who are probably dead by now, use to care too much about their lawns and would waste so much damn time taking care of that lawn. I had a friend who got rock salt fired at him for flipping off an old man at the corner who told him to get off his lawn. He told me his Father said  he deserved it for flipping off the old man. I was surprised even as a 9 year old that his Father would say that to him. Times were much different back then.

as far as ann arbor goes...

we lived on dewey my junior year and we had this neighbor who would call the cops on us all the time.  I mean like 10am on a football saturday call the cops... 

we just kept drinking, smoking, and tried to pretend he didn't exist.

dude asked me to push my car into the street before starting it in the morning because i was loud during the summer, thats what a duesche he was...

some lawyer named adam.

I wasn't a good person when I was younger so I would basically be as loud as I could to be frustrating during the moments I were sober.

It worked, he moved out eventually.  

Can't remember exactly, but I am sure it was something about leather helmets and the Single Wing: the "get off my lawn" curmudgeon in our neighborhood was Fritz Crisler.

I only have one 'get off my lawn' encounter at Ann Arbor that happened in 1982.  I was walking home from Army ROTC lab in my fatigues.  Some 'old' (he seemed old to me) guy was washing his VW Beetle.  He looked at me, I looked at him and he called me a 'fascist pig'.  

My response was to just smile at him and kept walking.  I figured he could interpret that smile however he wanted.

I usually said, "Get ON your lawn? Are you saying "GET ON MY LAWN?" I'm already on your lawn!!!"

Ok not really. I was a good kid... stayed off of people's lawns.

When I see kids on my lawn today, I wave to them and ask them why they aren't wearing shoes when it's 29 degrees outside. I am, however, generally confused as to who Cardi B is and why she is popular.

When I was a lad, we used to have to talk through six FEET of shag carpet and turn a dial on the television...and we only had THREE CHANNELS....and after we turned the channel, we had to turn the dial on the arial antenna to make it swing to pick up the signal, and if it was raining or storming, we got STATIC!

That's right...I WAS THE REMOTE CONTROL!  And I was THANKFUL!

Once when I was about 10, a friend and I were walking on the street near the curb on trash day in Southgate.  By one trashcan was a shoe box which was partially opened.  In the shoebox were photos of naked ladies...homemade photos taken with a polaroid camera...naked women in various poses... some with full early 80s bush, others completely shaved.  Quite a find for a couple of 10 year olds.

As we were filling our pockets with the photos, a fat older man in his 40s or 50s, wearing a white T-shirt opened up the door and yelled "Hey get the Fuck out of there!".... so we grabbed as many photos as we could and took off running down the snowy street.

How did I respond?  Not very well, I'm afraid. Something like this comes to mind: 

Before the age of 13 I got off the damn lawn because an adult to told me to and it was theirs. However, I harbored a deep resentment, because geez! - it was just grass!

But after that age I was put in charge of mowing our lawn. I resented that too, but over the years I learned and came to appreciate the amount of work and attention to detail that it required: not just mowing, but edging, raking, sweeping up, plus trimming the hedges. My folks were very proud of the way our yard looked, and I had a big hand in that. It wasn't "just grass" anymore. It was the result of my personal, sweaty efforts.

So by the time I was 18, and the local elementary kids strayed off the sidewalk, I often reminded them to - and in language their parents in the 70's probably didn't use.