The Kids In The Hood

Our neighborhood has a lot of kids in it. A LOT of kids. They swarm the area behind my house, where the pond and the playground are. They seemed to reach a critical mass in the thick of last summer, when it felt like the area was positively teeming, saturated, with children.
These children started to drive me crazy.
If they had parents, instead of being a Lord of the Flies camp in action as I suspected, they were never anywhere to be found. They were SO. LOUD. Screaming, hollering, whooping, singing, swearing, yalping, whistling, shrieking. By the dozens! An endless cacophony streaming in the windows on the soft warm air.
They were always irritating me; terrorizing the stragglers, harassing the animals, pulling branches off the trees, leaving wrappers everywhere.
Finally, I decided, that's It!
I created a weapon. I grabbed my back-up (Little One), and I hit the playground to combat the obnoxiousness. It was a large force I was up against, but this, Peanuts, was not my first picnic.
I happen to have a battle plan; finely honed over years of facing unruly bunches of short people.
So here is what I did:
I went to the playground. And I played.
I talked directly to every kid, I gathered up their names. I came back, every day. They started to get kinda used to me. (I'm so sneaky!) They started to play with Little One. (It's working!) I started to have their names memorized. (I've got you now!) And then I brought out the Weapon. The big guns. Loaded! With chocolate chips.
COOKIES. Oh yes I did.
And that was it. The kids and me? We were Friends. You may not think, at first, that this is the best way to fight an enemy, but it is! Especially small, sneaky ones.
Because the thing is, once we were friends, and we played together, and we laughed together, and we had a serious mutual respect and trust going, they started to care. To care about Little One, and to care what I think.
So, suddenly, a casual conversation about what "mental disability" is wasn't a lecture, so much as a chat that got some boys thinking, and now a certain someone has a group of protectors rather than teasers. Suddenly, a disapproval of littering, and praise for picking up trash translates to a way to impress a friend. "See, C? I always put my wrapper in the trash can" and "Hey! Hey! I do too!!" Heh, heh.
Suddenly, I can yell from my back deck, "Hey guys, She's taking a nap!" and the decibels fall. Or, "LJ Brian you had better leave those geese alone!" and LJ is embarassed. LJ is ashamed. LJ doesn't chase the geese.
In fact, it's surprising how much of a deterrent it is, just to know that there is a grown up watching, who cares, and who knows your NAME.
And if that grown up is someone who doesn't just yell at you, but who respects you, who you like, well. Then you might not even want to act up behind their back...especially if the grown-up is friends with all the other kids...who will tell on you.
Oh yes. These days, not a whole lot goes on in the Land of the Flies that I don't hear about. And I know everyone well enough to know who are the real trouble-makers, who are the followers, who are the peacemakers. It makes it a lot easier to deal with problems as they arise, knowing how each kid responds to different tactics.
And, to be honest, now that they're all my little buddies, the noise just doesn't bother me so much. And some of the annoyances are not such a bad trade-off for the fact that Little One now has a Legion of admirers.
She calls to them from the deck and they flock to talk to Her and make faces so She'll laugh. "Mommy mommy! Friends outside! Friends! Playground please, please mommy!" We go and someone sees us coming. "Little One's here! Little One's here!" and they all come running. They line up to hug Her, and give Her sticks and freshly picked weeds, and fight over who gets to push Her in the swing first. They teach Her how to climb the ladder, hold Her hand on the bridge, and make sure She always gets a turn.
Little One is by far the little one in the group; the next youngest in the "regular" crowd is nearly 4, most are between 6 and 10. But they all adore Her, and are never too cool for Her to kiss them. And when there is a new kid on the playground, they always introduce both of us as their friend.
In a way, it's added more noise to our lives, rather than less. After too many days of 5 and 6 rings of the doorbell asking if we could come out and play, I had to institute a "no ringing, no knocking, unless someone is bleeding or broken" rule.
J sometimes gets home to find a half dozen children giggling in the living room, or "helping" me make dinner, or knotted around the stoop, trying to make Little One laugh through the glass door.
But Little One does laugh, and it's lovely. I get my groceries carried in by 6th graders, in exchange for the bragging right of calling out from my deck that they're in C's house. My dog gets more fetch, wrestles, pats and ear scratches than he knows what to do with. I am fairly confident that no matter what goes down in my neighborhood, no one is going to mess with my house, my yard, or my car. Not with my little fleet of spies and guards running in the streets. I know no one will dare mess with my baby. And, I get to play. I get to talk about things like what is the best amusement park ride ever, or how high does the highest tree in the whole world probably grow. And I always, always, have a reason to bake cookies.