"People Were Yelling Out In The Street" (Summer Visitation 2009)

Photo By John Hoff

Last night a document came into my hands--a brief in the "True JACC" lawsuit to determine the legitimate leadership of the Jordan Neighborhood--and I was eager to show it to an involved party. I told my son, Alex, that I'd be gone for a little while, but he'd be fine. He could play video games and watch cartoons, but I expected him to "be in bed at a decent hour" on his own initiative.

When I got back at about midnight, my son was asleep in bed, obediently, but he had blocked the bedroom door from the inside with a big plastic bin full of books...

I pushed the door open and turned on the light, waking him where he was laying asleep in front of the electric fan.

"What's up, Alex?" I asked. "Why did you block the door?"

He shrugged.

"Were you afraid of burglars?" I asked.

He told me somebody had been angrily "yelling out in the street" and it made him afraid they'd just come right in the house. He didn't say so, but the implication was obvious to me: this doesn't happen in his affluent South Metro suburb. He's not accustomed to it.

I told my son this happens pretty frequently around here, though not as often as it used to since the low-lifes at the "domestic violence house" got evicted, thank god. Things are improving, all the time, through the constant efforts of active and involved residents taking their neighborhood back from thugs. Frankly, I was surprised it took more than a week for this problem to come to my son's attention. Progress!

I informed my son that I don't even bother to call the police about "no account people" arguing out in the street unless I hear the sounds of somebody being hit. I told he doesn't need to worry the conflict will spill into our house, beyond the deadbolt on the front door. That just doesn't happen. Their stupid, colorful arguments concern their own troubled lives, not us. Sometimes it's even fun to listen!

"I'll be asleep in the next room, now," I told him. "You don't need to worry, OK?"

"OK," he said, smiling sheepishly.

Pictured above, my son picking out library books. He has some kind of fascination with the scientific phenomenon of "absolute zero," the coldest temperature theoretically possible; very important to concepts such as "superconductivity."