Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss how important it is to see signs of life in our local communities.
If It Ain’t Cryin’, It’s Dyin’
As most of you know, my husband suffered a serious health scare a couple of weeks ago. As part of his rehab, we’ve been walking close to four miles every day, two in the morning and two at night. Over the holiday weekend, we noticed that there was a pair of teenage boys out joyriding on their bicycles every time we went for our walk.
At first, my husband kinda growled at the sight of them. “What are these dumb kids doing out on their bikes all the time?” he grumbled. It made me laugh because it gave me the perfect opportunity to joke about him being two years older than me, and that his “old man” status was showing. But after having to listen to him complain about these kids for several walks in a row, I finally stopped him in the middle of his rant to remind him that this is much better than the alternative.
Our neighborhood is a mix of older boomer-aged grandparents and younger families like ours. Still, except for our children, you hardly see the kids out walking or playing on their scooters, bikes, or skateboards. I know they live near us because I pass them waiting for the school bus every morning. Still, during the summer, you’d hardly know other kids were living in our area.
But here we have kids being kids out in the open, not on iPads, no cellphones in sight, just playing in the fresh air and warm sunshine. This is a great sign for our community, and so I told him to knock it off. I wanted him to look at these kids and smile when they rode by, doing innocent, young-teen things like wheelies or whatever.
It reminds me of something one of our priests used to say when a baby interrupted his homily during Mass: “If your church isn’t crying, it’s dying.” It was his way of calming the parents and letting them know that their family was not only welcome but a positive sign of a growing community of faith.
This is how I feel when I see those boys zoom by us on our walk. It’s a sign that, despite the depressing nature of our fallen world, there is still hope that this younger generation, the one our girls are a part of, has a love for things outside the digital landscape they were born into.
When I was younger, we would walk or ride our bikes all over town. Sometimes we’d take spending money with us to use for treats at the corner store. We were never met with a scowl or harsh demeanor by the clerk because it was such a natural part of our town to see kids taking part in the community.
Obviously, there were times when we were more mischievous than just riding our bikes for candy stops. Who among us hasn’t toilet-papered their crush’s house? Or ding-dong ditched the cranky old man who lives on the street that gives everyone the creeps?
But it’s hard for kids these days to get into somewhat innocent shenanigans without facing serious or sometimes fatal repercussions. An 11-year-old boy lost his life playing ding-dong ditch with his cousin over Labor Day weekend.
He was shot after he ran up to knock on the door. From all accounts, the little boy wasn’t playing the disturbing version of this game that’s made the news, where kids target the same house ten to twenty times, scaring the occupants inside. It was one mistake that proved fatal because we no longer live in a world built on high trust.
When the homeowner hears knocking at the door, his automatic thought is no longer, “it’s probably kids being kids.” No, he’s wondering if it’s the beginning of another violent break-in that has become all too common.
Two decades ago, neighborhoods knew each other, kids were out of their houses, and the prank was contained within a safety net provided by our high-trust society. We no longer live in a world where you can leave your front door unlocked or feel safe without a 24/7 video surveillance system. What was once considered “childhood mischief” is now read as threatening.
The prank didn’t change — society’s trust levels did. And because of how violent our world is now, it seems that kids are almost required to stay indoors to avoid any chance that something like this might happen.
So when I see these boys enjoying themselves outside, it makes me smile. They feel safe and confident in the area they are growing up in, and that’s really nothing that should make me sneer.
My poor husband now had to listen to me rant about his outlook on the situation for the entire two miles. I didn’t know if it made any difference by the time we got back home, until we took our next walk.
As we were turning the corner, we were met with a group of young teenagers. What started out as two boys had now turned into four boys and a girl. I watched my husband watch them as they rode around our quiet neighborhood, then a smile appeared on his face. He had given in to my not-so-subtle attitude adjustment.
Then I heard the words every wife wants to hear: “Honey, you were right.”
We should want to see our children playing safely together in our neighborhood. It’s a sign our country isn’t dying. It gives us hope that the communities that raised us are still working, maybe not everywhere, but it is where we chose to call home.
WHAT I SAW THIS WEEK:
A speaker at the People’s Conference for Palestine gave step-by-step instructions for radicals to use to target shipments of critical U.S. military equipment used in the F-35 fighter jet. Aisha Nizar, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, urged people to target “very vulnerable supply chains” to disrupt our ability to build one of our most critical national security instruments. You can read more about that treasonous act HERE.
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