“One with the land”
Today on a walk
in my new neighborhood
North Berkeley
At sixteen hundred hours and twenty minutes
I watched a group of young boys
age three to maybe eight
play a game of war with sticks.
It was a kind of game I had played as a boy
and I’m sure every generation of boys before me did the same.
There was no anger or hurt feelings in the children,
they were smiling and having fun.
But here the teams were chosen based on race.
(team white was outnumbered)
The youngest looked for bigger sticks
but couldn’t bring himself to be too far from his big brother
because he didn’t really know what was going on.
Parents were on their phones
eating cheese
sharing their traumatic experience of having heard a helicopter at night.
(Berkeley. Verb – to make oneself feel better by telling a stranger how they should live their life.)
I wanted to Berkeley the shit out of them.
My social crime today is having not done that.
The crime is cowardice.
I considered making a little video of the children in the park as proof
but that’s really, really creepy
so I did not.
Humans,
children are watching.
Also, pretty sure aliens are also watching
but that somehow has managed to just slip under everyone’s radar.
How convenient for the aliens……
I’ve been social-distancing too long.
Now if you’ll excuse me I must muster the courage to go on Nextdoor
and fail at finding a non-triggering way of saying “you’re a bad parent.”
Black Lives Matter.
A Narcissist Writes Letters, To Himself 
Love this. One time I thought about capturing all the crazy things parents say to their kids in public and putting it in a book. And I had kids so I’m not being self righteous – we all fail. One of my favorites was the little boy in line with his mom at the checkout line. He spotted a quarter on the floor under the counter and asked if he could retrieve it. She said, this is why I never want to bring you with me. The End. I felt so bad for him.
Not so much a failure to acknowledge the problem of the child’s behaviour as a failure to acknowledge the child at all. The world would be so much better if parents gave their children the attention they need (he says while commenting on a blog post and ignoring his own daughter…)
LOL! Glass houses 🙂
Best places to throw stones
LOL! Absolutely 🙂
Aliens are probably grateful they don’t live on this planet of disaster. I am thankful my parents, who grew up when you couldn’t even try on shoes, allowed us to be children and not always have to focus on all the bad in the world. Being child was great in a lot of ways back then because we got to be children and not warriors.