Child Abuse

Allow me to preface this by saying that I like children. Honestly I do. I appreciate the wide-eyed wonder, the blunt literalness, the unaffected openness of emotions which children carry. I honestly do like children. I even go out of my way to entertain children. Ask anyone who has ever seen me pass by an infant. Seriously, I cannot be in the vicinity of a young child without trying to bring a smile to the young face. I’ve been known to dance for many a baby in my time.

With this made perfectly clear, I need to say that the children in my neighborhood have got to go. I’m serious. They are a blight upon the land. At the risk of sounding Mr. Wilsonian, they’re menaces. They need to disappear. They should be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

I know this sounds harsh. Trust me, this not a position I have arrived at lightly. It is not as though I simply woke up one morning and decided all the kids in my neighborhood needed to be ‘taken care of’. These kids are just asking for it. Seriously, all of a sudden I think the child population of my street has jumped ten fold. Kids are everywhere. I can’t step outside without running into a sulky four-year old delinquent. I don’t think these children even have parents. They simply arose from the streets complete with bad attitudes and toys to put right under my car tires every morning. I don’t see parents. The only evidence of parenting is the occasional disembodied harpy scream. Piercing inhuman sounds telling kids to pick up this, get in here, don’t touch that, and just wait until your father gets home. This is often how I awake. With this shrill yell vibrating some awful cord in my subconscious. Still, the parents are unseen – I do see adults on porches, drinking and watching bug zappers in an almost religious rapture, but I have no reason to connect these folks to the children.

Toys are everywhere. I don’t know what corn field these tow-headed brats walked out from, but they sure as hell brought a lot of swag with them. Every night as I fumble down the dark breeze-way to my apartments entrance, it is almost a foregone conclusion that I will trip over a ‘My Little Pony’ or this elaborate radio controlled skate boarding figure which seems to be everywhere. My sidewalks have become concrete dump bins for all types of childhood playthings. If in the future my street is excavated by future archeologists, they will be sure to conclude that my street was a strange enclave society ruled by children with no noticeable adult presence – kind of like in ‘Beyond Thunderdome’.

If the toys are bad, the children themselves are worse. I can’t tell you how often I’ve emerged from the protective cocoon of my apartment, only to be immediately confronted with a sullen-eyed child, with a strange, hard slant to his mouth, like he’s sizing me up and saying to himself: “I can take this sucker.” And this is right on my porch. These kids have no respect for private property. They don’t even have respect for their own lives. Yesterday, as I got out of my car a young child of maybe four, pedaled past on a bike resplendent with training wheels.

“Look at how fast I can go,” the kid said to me with a daredevil indifference to his voice. He didn’t even seem affected by the fact he was riding a girls bike. The pink color and bent bar gave him away.

“You be careful,” I said back. I was trying to sound friendly. I put a mock note of disapproval and a little appreciation in my voice. I thought the kid might like it.

“MAKE ME!!!” He yelled. It was as though I had offended the deepest part of him. He threw his unfiltered cigarette to the ground and tore off down the street, recklessly bouncing from one bent training wheel to the next.

Now, I fear my neighborhood. When I walk through to my apartment, the children pause and observe me implacably. They are like birds nesting in a playground in a Hitchcock film. Now they are harmless, but their sheer numbers and the oddness of their configuration, portends deep unease. That is why things have come to this point. These children can not be left to take over these streets. These children will not overcome me. I am strong. I am clever. I actually pay rent. Now is the ultimate moment in history. It is either them or it is me. God, I pray I am the one to make it out alive, but if you do not hear from me over the next few weeks, you know what has become of me: Wished into a corn field.

Shalom
James