heartless

i don't know if i've ever told you this, but my neighborhood is infested with kids. to those of you who actually read this and are also parents: rock on ... your kids are awesome. (hi mom!)

now there's a new one. the self-proclaimed "SE" kid. not that there's anything wrong with that! i know plenty of current adults who should have been identified SE a long time ago. oh, stop acting like i'm not talking about you. anyway! something else you should know about him: as his stepmother drove by, she told me that he's a cross between dennis the menace and charles manson but that she loved him and she'd see us later. as far as i can tell, his only real flaws are that he's seen "the mask" too, too many times and that he comes over uninvited ... just like all the other kids ... all the non-SE kids.

so it has nothing to do with SE and everything to do with assuming i'm a likable part of the community, which i'm not. if you want to come over and rake my lawn, then i guess i'll learn to be. but if you want to come over and rake my lawn and fight with other kids about who gets control of a broom, well, then you have to go.

see how that works? here's another. if you want to come over and pull weeds out of my driveway, excellent. if you want to come over to ride your bike through the decorative grass, play with the wind chimes, pick wild cherries off my tree and throw them at my house, get the dog all riled up, watch a movie, tell me that you're thirsty, sell me something, or offer up random facts about a cheetah's eating habits ... well, maybe you should think about not hanging around.

christ ... i really am heartless, aren't i? and this wasn't even what i wanted to talk about! all i really wanted to tell you was that (a.) there's a new kid next door and (b.) the moment the lawnmower made an appearance in the front yard this weekend, all the kids within a half mile radius showed up on my porch. some of them wanted to help, some of them didn't. the ones who did stayed and took orders just as kids should. the ones who didn't went home to sell lemonade at the end of a dead end street.

what a wonderful metaphor for life.