u/Careful_Character900

▲ 0 r/AITAH

AITAH for shunning all of my neighbors from my life?

This story happened about 14 years ago. Simply put, I was very close with some neighborhood kids, let's call them Billy, Hayden, Ernest & Mary. For some context, Billy was the closest to me, and I was the new kid on the block, so I was glad I could make friends rather quickly. We used to hop on our bikes and go around the area, sometimes even selling candy with some other kids who quickly inducted us into their group, etc. Billy always visited my house instead of me his, having food with my family and sometimes even playing video games. Ernest, Hayden and Mary aren't as important, we simply knew each other and were in a group, all kids about the same age. Very importantly, my family was lower-middle class, and Billy's family was very poor. I'm relatively sure his father was an alcoholic & mechanic, and he didn't have a mom.

We now come to the crux of this story. One day, I invited all of them to my house so we could play on my Wii, after all, I had recently bought a new controller and had spent various days just playing whatever games I had. My parents had recently bought me a copy of "Just Dance 4", so we decided to play that. Everyone got their turns and after about 20 minutes, I was up alongside Billy. I hadn't noticed that he hadn't put on his Wii remote strap, so we just kept dancing along until suddenly, his controller flies right past me and smacks into the wall, and I very quickly paused the game and went to check it out. No signal at all, it seemed completely broken. This was a new controller too; one of those transparent ones. I turned around and yelled at Billy, chastising him for breaking my brand new controller, and despite his apology, I wasn't having any of it, and asked him to leave the house. He got sad as he walked out, and I had to ask everyone else to leave, after all, there was only one controller left. I never spoke to any of these neighbors again, presumably because of my outburst against Billy, and we never got a chance to talk things out. A few years later, I ended up selling my bike, and at that point there was nothing connecting us anymore, so I figured that bridge was burnt and there was no point speaking ever again (I never had very good social skills up until adulthood). Anyway, I never got a new controller, and only 10 years or so later after the fact did my dad and I decide to dust off the old Wii and buy some new controllers for it to relive those old games.

I'm now living in a different neighborhood, so I ask, AITA for shunning all of my neighbors from my life?

reddit.com