Child's Play

I have the most disturbing conversations with children. A couple of summers ago I talked to a little boy who told me that his Mama was going to get him a puppy like mine - as soon as his Daddy got out of prison. Today I had two fun conversations with children.

Convo 1 - I am trying to walk Dogger. Dogger doesn't want to or she wants to go to the post office, she's being a pain. We stop and talk to the little herd of kids that live around the corner from us. We're chatting about the size of Doggers feet, how big her eyes are, what nice fur she has. Dogger doesn't care but its good for my ego, anyway. There is a guy further up the street and he hollers that wants me to go and talk with him and his friends. They are like larger versions of the herd of children, we talk about the exact same stuff. I'm thinking about going down there to check in with Doggers adult fan club and one of the little girls, maybe seven, eight tops - says "No!No!No!Don't Go!" and I'm thinking WTF? She goes on "He's drunk! He's beats on his wife! He tried to kidnap some kids! Don't Go over there! Don't talk to strangers!! go the other way!". Dogger wanted to go home anyway and I followed her lead.

Convo 2- Little kids who live at the drug dealers or next door to them, I don't know, they are very tiny and they like dogger. They are in my drive way and we are again talking about Dogger and her total beauty. We are also talking about the neighborhood cats. The very tiny boy says he beats on cats, he hates cats. The larger tiny boy says the other boy does no such thing. We then move on to cops.

The very tiny boy likes cops and wants to be one. I turn the conversation towards the recent cop visit. It turns out that they sent two cop cars because it was a domestic dispute. His uncle was fussing at his aunt, his uncle picked up a knife and the cops had to be called. The kid is, four, maybe.


Childhood in my neighborhood is not kid stuff.