House of Eratosthenes

I have memories of running around the suburb of Tempe, AZ and playing in the dirt field, an on-and-off construction site, in my bare feet. The satellite shows that’s some kind of bigass mall with a CVS pharmacy & some other stuff. It might have been a future extension for the parking lot of our neighborhood church. It’s a good piece of distance down the block, maybe a football field away, around the corner…assuming I’m calculating things right, it has been four decades. Anything could’ve happened to us. Oh yeah, and anytime; we had to be called home for supper. When it started getting dark. During the summer.

Well, this mom got hauled away in cuffs because her kids were playing outside in the cul de sac on those little razor scooters. Their ages are nine and six. Hmm…we left Tempe shortly after I turned six. How old were we when I was throwing dirt clods at my brother with the broken glass lying around, as the shadows got longer and dinnertime approached, well out of sight of my own mother? Five maybe?

As the video makes clear, this was treated as turn-round-hands-behind-yer-back stuff. And, there is the matter of seven thousand dollars or so in “legal bills.” You know, that sends all this “keeping an eye out for your kids like a good neighbor” stuff sailin’ out the window.

I have another memory, as a single dad, splitting up with the Mom years ago finding out a caseworker had been assigned to us. After a miserable week or two in which everyday life became a “What the F*ck?” the case was dismissed with the complaint found to be without merit, it had to do with my kid having orange teeth because he ate a bag of Cheeto’s or something. My bachelor-pad household was just coming to be acquainted with the new child support payment, and seven thousand dollars in legal bills would not have been exactly welcome. Then, gradually in the months thereafter, it became clear the real focus of the complaint was some kind of a grudge. Had nothing to do with me or the kid, someone picked a fight with the Mom.

Women-not-getting-along, again. Catfight. (Well I’m sure somewhere, a man has done this too…we’ll just make that assumption so we’re not picking on any particular sex, and in the strictest technical sense I don’t know if this was purely a girl-fight.)

You know, it’s awfully funny. We have all this rage for parents who yell a little bit too loudly and “spoil” the soccer game by pushing their kids to try harder. That’s a clash of cultures, some parents think winning matters, and others think it doesn’t. Well, this is a clash of cultures too. Some people think there should never be any possibility of anything going wrong, ever. Razor-scootering around the cul de sac is way too dangerous for them. Which is fine, they have a perfect right to that crazy idea.

But they want everyone else to live that way too, which is not fine.

Conflict amongst adults, coming to influence the everyday lives of the kids, during the soccer match is already viewed as not fine.

But here in the anonymous-tipster situation, it is perfectly okay. The kids’ lives can be turned completely upside down, they get to watch Mom get hauled down to the pokey in handcuffs, because Mabel across the street got a little bit bored or had an axe to grind.

Boy, that’s a double-standard I’d love to see smoothed out a little bit.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Funny. I was just writing today about where all that freedom to play went. How guarded and closed off people are anymore. The loss of the free-roaming aspect of childhood. This certainly takes it up a notch.
- Andy | 09/18/2012 @ 12:49
The kids were riding motorized electric scooters on a public road. In most states this is illegal. In all states, this is a very bad idea and kids die doing this all the time. 6 is too young to be trusted around motor vehicles.

Watching from a chair in the yard (or from inside the house) will not prevent a car from hitting your child.

The mother wouldn’t have a $7000 legal bill if she hadn’t sued the police. Judging from what we know, I suspect she wouldn’t have been arrested if she didn’t have a very bad attitude. The charge may have been inappropriate but her behavior is not justifiable.
- pngai | 09/18/2012 @ 17:05
Mkay, now according to the video report the mother was out in her yard not inside the house. I don’t see how that’s called unsupervised, is someone contesting the statement that she was where she said she was? The report makes no mention of this. If the outrage is that the kids were unsupervised, but you have to make up that part of it in order to say that’s what happened, then this is a tempest in a teapot.

Also, since it seems there was a difference of opinion about the proper age for a child to be using these vehicles, did the complainant, oh, I don’t know, maybe TALK to the mother in a civilized way, seek some less dramatic solution to the problem short of calling the police? We don’t know, since she declined to be interviewed.

As for illegality, there is no mention of a charge for illegally operating motorized vehicles on the road, the charge was “child endangerment” and it was dropped. So — someone somewhere, functionally anonymous, got an idea in their head that the mother shouldn’t be raising her children the way she is, the mother ends up in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit. No appeal.

So my comments stand, because ya know what, I don’t think it works that way. If you want godlike authority over how other people should be raising their kids, at least have the decency to put your name out there. And what were the cops thinking?
- mkfreeberg | 09/18/2012 @ 17:20

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Mom Arrested for Letting Kids Play OutsideTuesday, September 18th, 2012

Mom Arrested for Letting Kids Play Outside
Tuesday, September 18th, 2012