Great Scooter Caper of 2020

When Life Gives you a Pack of Kids on Scooters

How do you make scooter-ade?

I have written before in a few stories about the pack of school age kids in my neighborhood. Riding scooters seems to be the current pastime of the group.

Past phases have included some sort of Nerf gun battles, water fights in the hottest days of summer, riding 3- or 4-wheel carts down the alley, and now the current evolution is performing tricks on their scooters.

Our house sits on the corner of an alley and a road. The roads are narrow, barely two cars can pass, and is an essentially dead-end in the form of a “U” shape. There is very little vehicle traffic, only locals and delivery people. Although we get a great deal of foot traffic because it is a great area to walk and there is the great view (in title photo) just at the end of the street.

Here is a diagram of our neighborhood for orientation. It isn’t probably necessary, but I am a visual learner so pictures help. Our house is the grayish rectangle and our carport is the smaller rectangle. Between our carport and house there is a ledge about 1 ½ feet high (indicated by red arrow) and our front walk has a set of three short steps (blue arrow). The dark blue to the right indicates the water of Puget Sound.

The X’s represent other homes. Those circled in green are where the various kids live. The home two down from us has either 4 or 5 kids. They are hard to count as they don’t hold still long. The rough guess on total neighborhood age count is one at 13, one 10, a couple of 9-year old’s, couple of 7’s and one or two 5 or 6’s. Occasionally a few more drift down the road from areas off the map.

They are reasonably well behaved. The 7-year-olds got in some hot water with the neighbor last fall when they started throwing some of the apples that had fallen off the tree in her front yard down the street. Once you see one apple explode and disintegrate as it skitters down the road, you have to throw another, right? At least they weren’t throwing them at cars or windows.

So, with that being the most heinous behavior I have seen, for the most part they roam around and play. They aren’t so good with property lines or staying off lawns and yards. But it is hard to blame them as when someone is coming after you in a Nerf gun war, you need to be able to dodge, weave and hide.

Of course, now with schools closed for the year, their hours of outside play have changed to be most any time of day. They aren’t out a whole lot in the mornings, as I am sure they are doing online school, but sometimes they are. They aren’t outside continually, it is intermittent.

Now that scooters have become the rage, it is inevitable that tricks and jumps will beckon. Because of that, they have been spending a fair amount of time negotiating the drop off in the alley and jumping off our three steps in front.

Maybe because they seem to congregate a lot near our house, somebody may have thought they are our kids (at least some of them)? Or maybe someone decided to relatively indiscriminately spam the entire neighborhood with a typed letter that arrived in our mailbox yesterday.

The letter did have a return address on our street, but after some looking around, it appears to be a bogus house number. One that would put it off the embankment at the end of the road. So, from the mystery sender, we got this delivered yesterday:

Text of letter reads:

Hello,

Could you please keep your kids closer to your home instead of letting them play in front of other people’s homes for hours on end? They use their scooter on the sidewalks and don’t give way to others who are trying to use them. They have no sense of social distancing and make others move out of their way. They also trespass on other people’s property and think that any cement surface is their playground (even if it is next to another homeowner’s front door).

I don’t know if you realize this but there are several folks who are in the vulnerable category for COVID-19 who live here. It’s a very stressful time for them and to have to deal with kids on the sidewalks who are not social distancing is very unnerving.

There are also people who must work from home, and it is very distracting hearing kids constantly playing in front of their homes.

These are extraordinary times… I get that, and kids need to play but can’t they play closer to their own homes and not the homes of others? Please show some consideration for your other neighbors.

Thank you, A concerned neighbor

After I opened it, all I could do was laugh. Hilariously.

Our youngest is 19 and lives in Montana, the oldest 28 in Texas. Of the middle kids, one son is in Chicago, and the other two are local (meaning 20-minute drive).

Sure. We’ll give a ring and tell them to “play a little closer to home”. And, to keep their damn scooters off other people’s sidewalks! It might actually be nice; it’s been nearly 6 months since we have seen Samantha in Austin. We would enjoy the visit.

My wife was upset at first. She wanted to storm over to the sender’s house and straighten them out a little. Me, I wanted to send back a humorous letter telling them all about our kids’ scooters (Craig’s is more of an elevated train which he calls the Red Line, and Caitlin’s is four-legged and eats a lot of hay).

As it turns out, neither idea could be attempted because the return address doesn’t actually exist. Now we get to play the guessing game of, “Who sent the letter?”

In some ways, I can understand where they are coming from. My wife and I have joked about going out and yelling, “You dang kids get out of my yard!” But, honestly what would that serve? As I mentioned, they are pretty much just doing what every kid should do, explore and learn and play.

What should we care if they play hide and seek in our bushes and go bailing off our sidewalk steps on their scooters? It’s not like we are using them, “Out of the way punks, I am about to double ollie off these steps!”

Occasionally they get a bit loud when they are really hyped up about something. We have had to shut the front windows a couple of times, when the pitch gets really elevated. But, in the big scheme of how the world works, if some kids being excited about playing is what really grinds your gears, then I feel quite sorry for you.

I mean have you heard about racism, poverty, human rights violations, or even people losing their jobs because of the Coronavirus? If your annoyance alarm is triggered at the “kids playing” level, then you are in for rough time in life.

Fortunately for us, my wife and I love a good mystery story. Who could the covert letter writer be? Maybe we can use an empty wall to put up one of those photo boards with red yarn linking all the suspects?

Who else is up for “Who Dunnit — the Coronavirus Version”? Keep tuning in, there just may be updates forthcoming in future stories…

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.