"My Neighbor's Kid Keeps Landing in Our Yard and My Children Think It's a Playdate"
Millicent Punt addresses calibration drift, the dangers of organized landing-anticipation rituals, and why your petunias are not a designated landing surfa
By Millicent Punt·June 30, 2026
The Drosswick backyard in question. The children, ages four, six, and nine, at what neighbors have come to call Tully Time. The petunias, foreground, have since been replanted.
Dear Millicent,
I need advice, and I need it before this weekend, because that is when my neighbor's son will next be airborne.
We moved to a lovely street in Drosswick nine months ago. Quiet, tree-lined, good school district. The Blottner family next door seemed wonderful. Still do, honestly. Grindle Blottner brings us baked goods. Her husband, Fendrel, helped us move our couch. Their son, Tully, is seven, polite, and arrives in our backyard approximately three times a week at speeds I would describe as "brisk."
The Blottners use a Child Chucker (WY-69, standard residential model) to send Tully to his education pod, which is four blocks east. Our yard is two blocks east. You can see the problem. Tully's trajectory passes directly over our property, and roughly once every three launches, he undershoots. He has landed in our garden twice, our kiddie pool once, and on our picnic table during a birthday party for my daughter, Britta, where he was immediately offered cake and a party hat.
My children (ages four, six, and nine) now treat Tully's arrivals as a feature of our home. They wait for him. They have assigned him a landing zone. My six-year-old, Stellan, times the landings with a kitchen timer and keeps a log. They call it "Tully Time." It is organized. It is enthusiastic. It is not safe.
I have spoken to the Blottners twice. Both times, Grindle apologized, Fendrel said he would "recalibrate," and the next week Tully was back in our petunias. I do not think they are negligent. I think their Chucker is pulling to the southwest.
I don't want to be the neighbor who files a complaint. But I also don't want to be the neighbor whose child gets hit by someone else's child at forty kilometers per hour. What are my options here?
-- Grounded but Anxious in Drosswick
Dear Grounded,
Oh, I hear you. I hear you completely. And before I say anything else, let me tell you that the phrase "my kids have assigned him a landing zone" made me set this letter down and breathe into my hands for a full thirty seconds, because I have been exactly where you are. Not metaphorically. My youngest once built a welcome sign. With a windsock.
Let's talk about what is actually happening here, because you are right on two counts and dangerously calm about a third.
First: the Blottners are almost certainly not negligent. A WY-69 pulling southwest is a known calibration drift, documented in O.O.P.S. Technical Bulletin 22-7 ("Lateral Deviation in Consumer-Grade Launch Systems"). It happens most commonly with units manufactured between 2021 and 2023, when the spring housing tolerances were, to quote the bulletin, "within acceptable parameters that have since been revised." The fix is a professional recalibration, not a backyard adjustment with a spirit level and optimism, which is what I suspect Fendrel has been attempting.
Second: you are not overreacting. An undershoot into a residential yard is a reportable event under the Ridgewell County Child Transit Safety Code, Section 14(b), whether or not the landing is what the code diplomatically calls "soft." Your petunias are not a designated landing surface. Your kiddie pool is not a deceleration buffer. Your daughter's birthday table is not an approved receiving platform, even if Tully was, by all accounts, gracious about the cake.
Now, the third thing, and this is the part where I need you to pay close attention.
Your children are logging arrival times. They have a system. They have enthusiasm and a kitchen timer. This is how it starts. I know this because of the Incident, which I will not describe in detail except to say that it also began with a log, a timer, and the sincere belief among my children that they could predict a pattern that was, in fact, chaos. The pattern held for eleven days. Then it didn't. Everyone was fine. We no longer own a kitchen timer.
Here is what I recommend, in order:
One. Contact O.O.P.S. Consumer Safety at 333-OOPS and request a Residential Overflight Complaint form (ROC-4). This is not a hostile act. It is a maintenance request. Frame it that way to the Blottners: "I filed so the county will send a calibration inspector, which is free and solves the problem for everyone." The Blottners get a fixed Chucker. You get intact petunias. Nobody files anything with the NAGs.
Two. Until the unit is serviced, install a standard Trajectory Alert Perimeter. The Fenwick Yard Safety catalog sells a residential version (model TAP-3) that detects inbound mass above four kilograms and sounds a fifteen-second warning tone. It is designed for exactly this situation. It also works on large birds, which is a separate conversation but relevant if you live near the marshlands.
Three. Dismantle Tully Time. I say this with love and with the weary authority of a woman who has dismantled three of her own children's well-organized catastrophe-anticipation rituals. Stellan's log is impressive. It is also training his siblings to stand in a landing zone and look up. Children should never be taught to stand still and wait for something to arrive at speed. This is in the O.O.P.S. Household Safety Guide, page forty-one, right between "Do Not Store the Chucker Loaded Overnight" and "The Chucker Is Not a Dryer."
You are a good neighbor and a thoughtful parent. The Blottners sound like good people with a drifting spring. Get the form filed, get the perimeter installed, and gently retire the kitchen timer. Tully can still come to birthday parties. He just needs to arrive through the gate.
Wishing you quieter skies,
Millicent Punt
P.S. If Stellan's landing log is detailed enough to include wind conditions and estimated descent angles, do not throw it away. Bring it to the O.O.P.S. inspector. They will use it. My daughter's records shaved two weeks off our investigation after the Incident, and she was four at the time, so her notation system used stickers, but the timestamps were immaculate.
