I live in the same house I grew up in and I've been noticing something the past couple of months that reminds me of my childhood days in this neighborhood--lots of families with children have moved in and the kids are playing everywhere.
Just last night, I saw three little girls and a little boy riding their bikes and/or rollerblading along the sidewalk in front of my house. Once in a while the kids in the neighborhood even congregate in my driveway and I don't have any problems with that.
I can remember adults from my neighborhood yelling at me as a boy for fetching a ball from their yard or for walking on their grass. I vowed back then to never become one of those people. I say, let the kids play. So what if they walk on my grass? Isn't that what grass is for?
I love the fact that my neighborhood apparently has a safe enough feel to it that parents are willing to let their little ones stray down the street a house or two. Unfortunately, my area of the city isn't as safe as it once was, but enough of the neighbors on my street know each other well enough to alert one another about anything that looks odd. And I'm thrilled about that.
Seeing kids playing on the same street and in the same yards that I played on and in is so cool.
Neighborhood kids used to gather in front of my house to play baseball in the street (it's a side street). I don't know how it happened, but at some point, a bit of tar or rubber embedded itself into the street and we used it as home plate. We used the tree on the side of my yard as first base. We used a Frisbee, a shirt, or an unused baseball glove for second base. And we used another tree on the other side of the street for third base. We also converted the street to a touch football field sometimes. I can't tell you how many nights we spent playing baseball or football out there, but we had a blast.
Most of those kids grew up and moved away and my neighborhood hasn't had many children in it for more than twenty years. But things are changing now. And I couldn't be happier about it.
