One of the more infamous tales from my childhood, told ad nauseum around the dinner table, involves my alleged attempt at the age of 5 to set the doctor’s office next door to our house on fire.

Dr. Hula, also our family physician, told my mother on the phone that I had a pile of leaves and a book of matches and was busy trying to light them right outside his office window.

Not surprisingly, this alarmed my mother, who came marching over and grabbed me, along with my matches, and dragged me home to face the consequences of my actions.

I don’t remember the punishment, but I can assure you it was sufficient to prevent any further attempts at fire starting in back of Dr. Hula’s office or any playing with matches whatsoever for some time to come.

I was not trying to set the good doctor’s office afire, however. I was just trying to light a fire. That might have been my first lesson in the law of unintended consequences. There were many more to come. I may be a slow learner.

Thirty or 40 years later, on a hot summer’s afternoon, I stood in our somewhat dilapidated windbreak, irrigating shovel in hand. Water trickled through the trees, which form a barrier between our house and our neighbors’ home. The windbreak had been neglected for a number of years and I was attempting to revitalize it as a defense against the wicked winds of winter.

As I stood there, I noticed a few hatchet marks on a couple of the fir trees, of the sort one makes when blazing a trail through the timber. A piece of baling twine was strung between a couple of the trees so I knew the neighbor kids had been playing in there.

Since we live in the country, there’s not a lot of kids in our neighborhood. My kids were grown and gone, we’d invited the neighbor kids to play in “the forest.” We loved hearing the sounds of their playing and laughing on a summer day. Made us feel, well, not quite so old.

Faced with a bit of a dilemma,  I didn’t want them hacking on the trees, I also didn’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill. I decided to ask their parents if I could speak to the fellows in private.

I tromped over in my irrigating boots and knocked on the back door. I think it was Clair, the boys’ dad, who answered the door. I asked if I could talk to the fellas.

When they appeared they each had that look on their faces, the same look I had on my face when mom came around the lilacs to fetch me from the doctor’s yard. My plan to talk to them privately went awry, as my plans generally do.

Both Clair and Nancy stood inside the door as I told the guys they were welcome to play in the trees but to please not damage them. Both guys apologized without prompting and Clair poked his head out the door and said something about no more messing with the hatchet for some time to come. Again, the law of unintended consequences.

The years have spun by at an alarming rate since that summer day and the boys have grown into fine young men. They too have left the nest, leaving their mom and dad with the same pangs of loss I felt when my kids drove out of the yard to make their own way in this world.

They come home again, but never to stay for long. Such is the way of the world.

When the fellows do come home, they sometimes call on my mom, who lives on the other side of my house. That’s the kind of kids they are.

She invariably makes them line up in a designated doorway and marks their height with a pencil. Said doorway is crowded with pencil marks from them and her great-grandchildren. They always humor her, although I’m pretty sure it feels a bit silly being as they’re grown men.

I know lots of neighborhoods in which the outcome from an incident like the tree hacking indiscretion could have been, would have been much different. Recrimination, escalation, vandalism, threats. You know what I’m talking about.

I never had a doubt or worry about the guys. Our neighbors are Mormons or Latter-day Saints, and we are not.

My dad is a retired Protestant minister. What we know from having lived with Mormon neighbors is they are the very best.

They live the values I was taught in my Sunday school: to treat people with kindness and respect and love. To be the best mom or dad you can be. To keep trying not matter what. To work hard. To take personal responsibility. To believe there’s something better after this life.

I’m not sweeping theological differences under the carpet, and I’m not a theologian. What I am saying in this age of religious strife and misery is we have far more in common with our Mormon neighbors than we hold in dispute.

I love them. Like the Bible says you’re supposed to.

And I bet they love me back, although I think I’m a little harder to love than they are, what with all the cussing and yelling that goes on over here.