Thursday, September 7, 2000

 

12:32 a.m. We had a nice, neighborly get-together tonight, courtesy of a bunch of red tape and government regulations. Lots of fun. The photo shows the basic set-up of the democratic process that a citizen must go through if he or she wants a variance from the established norm.

Or -- how about if the nursery school next door wants to double its size?

So, the neighbors of said facility were out to voice their own opinions on the thing. In addition, a few clients of the facility were sitting on the floor, coloring, and occasionally jumping up and running through the proceedings shaking a shoe box full of small pebbles. This didn't help their cause.

Although the din was considerable, louder even than the traffic outside and causing all the important folk on the right side of the table to speak louder and louder, in fact, there were only two children in the room. The school wants to increase its enrollment to 38 of the young rascals.

I dearly wish I had the courage to stand up and speak my mind on the situation. My office window is just outside their wooden-deck gerbil run, and they run around and around their narrow runway several times a day. They have to -- they're children.

Invariably one falls down and then there's a lot of howling, in addition to the whistles, drums, squeaky bike wheels, and general pounding of five-inch sneakers. Sometimes an adult comes out to help, but usually the child wails for a while and then whimpers for a little bit and then ... he or she gets on with it.

They have to. They are part of the run of the mill, now.

I often feel very sorry for them. They are being taught to share, to cooperate, and to let the mob decide. No one child can be the biggest deal in the world or the brightest star in the universe at the school -- that wouldn't be fair to all the others. No one child gets special treatment and some of the children are still in diapers, clutching bottles. Now, if they can't get special treatment at that age -- when?

The school next door is a rather expensive dual-language school, and although the second language is supposed to be French, usually it's Spanish that you'll hear being spoken above the children's heads. Most of the parents dropping off the kids arrive, cell phone to ear, in expensive vehicles and most look like they're heading off to important desk-type work once the kids are deposited.

They, too, are young and full of fire. Most will be fired many times in the years to come.

I was lucky enough not to have to drop my kids off. I was lucky, lucky, lucky to have been able to cuddle them from the time they were born until they left for kindergarten. And believe me, they left. Believe me when I tell you: They leave.

Five, six years. That's all you get. Little tiny moist palms, cornsilk hair and dewdrops on eyelashes.

So tonight, not surprisingly, the school didn't get the blanket endorsement it had been expecting. Two neighbors complained about the noise, Igor was interested in protecting his all-important driveway from the caravan of double-parking, garbage-can squashing parents-in-a-big-hurry.

The folks from the school were surprised and dismayed, I think, at the outcome. But that's how it goes when you have to share, and to cooperate. The mob always gets to decide.