Street Rules

by Marinka on September 27, 2009

My 11 year old daughter told me that she wanted to walk to school and to her friends’ houses by herself and I said, “absolutely, just as soon as I’m dead” which she thought was totally unfair, but I reassured her that we live in NYC in a middle of a terrorist threat epidemic and swine flu hysteria so that she may not have that long to wait after all.

That didn’t cheer her as much as I thought it would, so I decided to do a practice run with her.

It worked like this: She walked to school and I walked a respectful distance behind her, to monitor how she stopped at the red light and didn’t make eye contact with the hung over drag queens on the corner. (I can’t believe people move out of NYC when they have kids and deprive their progeny of these sights). Anyway, she was doing so well that I decided to throw a little Advanced Street at her.

“Hey, little girl!” I said. “Come with me. Your mom said that you should.”
She kept walking.
“I have a puppy that needs help!” I continued. “And a kitten that will be dead unless you come with me.”

She ignored me.

“Of course, there’s some candy and ice cream too.” I went on. “So, to recap. You need to come with me to help save a kitten and a puppy and have some candy and ice cream. Because your mother said that you should.”

She kept walking, not breaking her pace at all.

She passed my test!

I beamed with pride until we got to school and I realized that she had her headphones on. And that the people who were walking their kids to school right behind me were holding them unnaturally close and giving me wide berth.

One year ago ...

0saves
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the RSS feed.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Saracita June 14, 2010 at 1:03 pm

This made me giggle out loud. I’ll definitely be back for more.

Reply

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: