Never Cross Me in a School Zone

Drivers -- you are on notice. 

Slow down. Put down the iPhone. Stop for all reds and do not even THINK about making that illegal turn.

I offer this advice because the local public schools are back in session tomorrow. That means that once again I will be serving as security detail for my two children as they walk the one mile to and from classes. 

Moreover, be warned Ye Who Fail to Obey the Rules of the Road in School Zones, I will be armed.

That was not my original plan, but it became necessary two summers ago when the city decided it could no longer afford the $11 and change an hour it paid each of the crossing guards who manned the two intersections along the route to school.

I say "the city" because in two years I have been unable to determine exactly who pulled the plug on Fred and Ethel, the two friendly elderly guards who had patrolled our walkways and whose real names were not nearly as comical. 

When I called the school system to protest, the person who answered the phone said I really needed to take this up with the Police Department. 

The police told me I should bring the matter to the city Board of Representatives. 

The reps sent me back to the schools.

They all lead me straight to the bottle. 

Pepto, Jim Beam; rinse, repeat.

Cost-cutting aside, these officials did offer some logic (before passing the buck) as to why our route was now a local version of the unsecured Iraqi Red Zone:

• An off-duty police officer, paid by a private school along the way, usually manned one of the same intersections as the guards. 
• The other intersection had a pedestrian crossing light that could, in theory, halt all traffic.
• School-zone speed limit signs with flashing lights and radar readings to get drivers to slow down had also just been installed. 
• Finally, I was told, there just weren't enough schoolchildren who walked that route to merit the roughly $95 a day paid the two guards.

This all looks good on paper to the powers that be, but then again, on paper Bernie Madoff made many people look like millionaires. 

Here's how Tuesday will most likely play out in real life: 

At least half of the electronic school-zone signs will be off or malfunctioning because they have rarely all worked properly since being installed. (I've seen older versions of the same signs functioning correctly in other parts of town. Did my hometown get a deal on upgrading to Vista when it should have stuck with XP?)

The police officer won't be there because the private school doesn't start classes for another week. (Ah, it's good to be a member of the leisure class.) Even so, he only works mornings, not the afternoon walk home.

And while the pedestrian crossing signal works just fine at the other intersection, chances are at least one southbound driver will fail to heed the "No Turn on Red" sign and make a hasty, blind turn into that crosswalk -- just like the woman in the SUV who was yakking on her cell phone did two years ago on that first walk I took to school with my kids.

She missed me by about 6 inches that day. But next time, I won't miss her.


This is because on these walks, I now bring our dog. Our dog, I should note, tends to unburden his intestines of the previous night's meal right before that intersection.

So, scofflaws, this year if I witness you failing to obey traffic regulations at Newfield Avenue and Newfield Drive, check your roof racks when you reach your destination. In a plastic bag, tied by a single granny knot, you will find a meaningful reminder of your ignorance.

Coming Out of his Shell

You would have thought my son had found a hundred-dollar bill at the local beach rather than a clamshell. To hear him tell it, though, a few centuries ago that's exactly what this shell might have been.

Thing 2 produced the shell from his overstuffed Spider-Man backpack and began a brief history on how people along the Long Island Sound once used shells as currency. "But only if it has this blue part," he said, pointing out the patch of color on each half of the shell's inner lip. "If it wasn't blue, it wasn't money."

Though most of my four decades have been lived within a few miles of the Connecticut shores, my son -- at age 7 -- is now our household authority on the city's beachfront and aquatic life. That's just what I was hoping he'd become when he first told me he wanted to go to the summer camp run by a local nonprofit group that educates people about the wonders of the Long Island Sound and our obligation to protect it for future generations.

Growing up as I did in the one-acre-zoned isolation of upper suburbia made it easy to forget that our city fronts not just water but a vital Atlantic estuary that has provided food, livelihood and recreation to billions throughout time. But that is life in that part of town. It is sometimes like being stranded on an island where the only escape route of merit is a high-speed ribbon of asphalt running parallel with but never to the shore.

Besides, I come from a family of strict non-adventurers. Any trip from our neighborhood valley to a point much farther south than the all-you-could-eat salad bar at the old Brock's was believed to require a three-day supply of drinking water and a Sherpa.

This, however, should not be my son's life. He has the instinctive curiosity about nature and geography that I lacked as a child and then some, and I envy him in that way. After taking part in a free program SoundWaters offered this past winter at his school, he was eager to spend a few weeks of his summer learning more about how to tell a male diamondback terrapin from a female (all in the tail, people, all in the tail) and chasing spider crabs along the shores.

True to form, in recent days he has filled us with facts about how flounders evolved and what life is like in a salt marsh. Extracting each of these tidbits, though, required the usual parental pulling and prodding and, frankly, that left me a little disappointed. With his brain being crammed with new knowledge, I had expected regular deluges of tidbits without me needing to use that special singsong tone I normally save for coaxing out answers about his school day or why he hit his big sister.

Then one night, as I stepped onto the deck to cover the Weber following an evening's grilling, a full moon surprised me with its pale orange glow radiating mystically through the August haze. I called into the house for the kids to rip themselves from their portable gaming systems. All I hoped to hear from at least one of them was a simple "cool."

Thing 2 looked up and suddenly broke from his Nintendo trance.

"The horseshoe crabs are laying their eggs!" he said. "They only do that during full moons. They're laying them right now down on Cove beach."

That's when I knew camp had been worth every clam I had shelled out.

Come Back, Little Purple Dinosaur, Come Back

She bursts into our room and throws herself face first onto the bed between My Love and me. Between the mucus-filled sobs, she wails. Her body bares no visible wounds, no blood, no bruises.

A minute or so earlier, I had kissed Thing 1 good night, leaving her in the glow of the nightlight resembling a sugar-encrusted pink daisy that has enveloped her dreams since age 4. It had seemed to be a routine end to a routine midsummer's day.

She wants something but her words are muffled in the comforter and mattress. My Love and I look at each other, lost, and shrug.

Thing 1's only other spontaneous meltdown came roughly two years ago to the date. We had just finished a bedtime story when, without warning, she burst. She didn't want to go back to school in a few weeks. She didn't want to be different and hated and weird.

First grade had been exceptionally rough for a girl who had loved kindergarten so dearly. Only one classmate from the previous year was among the other 22 in her homeroom. A bully refused to assign her a role in the game of "family" they all played among the multi-colored slides and damp wood chips every day at recess. Someone had started rumors about why she wore sunscreen and floppy hats even during the New England winter.

"I want to be normal," she cried that night three years ago. It was the first and still the only time I had ever heard those say those words.

We start rubbing her back and asking her what's wrong tonight. She sits up a bit, her face red and swollen.

"I want Barney!" she wails.

My wife and I lock eyes. "Who?"

"I want Barney!" she cries again.

"Barney? The purple dinosaur?"

My 9-year-old girl, the aspiring musical diva and fashion maven, weeks away from fourth grade, flops down again but in cinematic slow motion.

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees," she says and disappears into the comforter.

Barney.

He was 10 inches of evil purple and green plush. What made him particularly satanic was a little button, hidden under the overstuffed polyester belly, that when pushed pierced the ears with warped musical plunks and saccharine:

"I love you.
You love me.
We're a happy family.
With a great big hug
and a kiss from me to you,
won't you say you love me, too?"

Barney was a fixture in Thing 1's early years. Our favorite game with him took place on the living room floor with me imitating his doofy whine as I made his stubby arms stack blocks that would, when high enough, inevitably tumble down on his prehistoric noggin. It brought each of us delight, but for different reasons.

"Sweetie," I say, "do we even have your Barney anymore?"

"I gave it to Mrs. K," she sobs back. "For her new baby."

Then it all came clear.

Mrs. K was her kindergarten teacher and, three years later, still Thing 1's favorite. When Mrs. K became pregnant last year, Thing 1 volunteered to give the new baby her Barney. This, to me, was an amazing act of charity … toward everyone, including me. For several years, Barney had been relegated to bottom of the basement toy box, only to be heard from when some bigger, heavier, more popular toy landed on top of him, forcing us to hear him gasp for unrequited affection through an ocean of plastic and double-A batteries.

Tonight, while Thing 1 scarfed down thin-crust pizza with her best friend's family during an evening out, she had seen her old kindergarten teacher in the restaurant.

And her baby.

And Barney.

And life as it once was.

"I have Mrs. K's e-mail address," I say. "Do you want me to ask her if you can have it back?"

"Noooooooooooo!" she moans. "I want Barney!"

"Then I'll e-mail her."

"Nooooooooooo! I want Barney!"

This continues for 20 or 30 minutes. We reason. We rationalize. We beg. She finally calms enough so My Love can escort Thing 1 to her room and settle her in.

How does one give back childhood innocence without taking it from another? I wonder. Does mending one heart always mean breaking another? And how much will this all cost me in the end?

My Love comes back in and we ponder and we theorize and we deconstruct our little universe in search of meaning and truth.

Then my wife says plainly, "She said she'd be OK if Daddy bought her another Barney."

In a few days, when the plain brown box arrives, I shall discreetly hand it to my daughter. There will be no acknowledgment, just silence, until she is upstairs, alone in her room, with the door closed and time standing still.

Weight For It

It's not like there haven't been signs.

The snug feeling in the waistband.

The slightly elevated blood pressure.

The inability to look down and determine whether one's toenails need clipping.

But, folks, this may be the one that finally sends the message home.