Scooters
Living in New York City is weird. Probably not for any of the reasons which you are thinking. It almost doesn’t make sense that New York is one contiguous city because each neighborhood is actually its own city. Sometimes these city-neighborhoods are as small as 10 city blocks by 10 city blocks.
Our city-neighborhood is the Upper West Side, but more specifically Central Park West between 79th and 89th . When walking the dogs at 4:50 am you would hardly ever know you were in the “city that never sleeps.” Which is one of the reasons I like waking up early. I feel like I have the neighborhood to myself. (And whoever the guy who keeps putting a cigarette in the mouth of the carved bear that sits in the median on Columbus advertising for a florist. You always get a laugh out of me.)
The recipe for our neighborhood is as follows: extract the entire suburbs of one town anywhere in the USA, subtract 95% of the flower beds and yards, gather all the buildings into neat little stacks of five to ten story structures, cram shops into the bottoms of 30% of these structures, sprinkle in a few schools here and there, and garnish with plenty of street parking and the occasional iconic fenced in basketball court.
There are numerous kids and families in our neighborhood. It seems like every single one has one of those infernal three-wheeled scooters. Without regard for life, limb, or others, these children speed throughout our neighborhood knocking down old ladies and narrowly avoiding being clipped by taxis. By kids I mean actual kids, not just young people who haven’t turned 18. I’m talking around 3 to 10-year olds just out there tearing up the streets. Every last one of them looks like they’re going into battle because they’re wearing so much safety gear. That’s probably the issue. When I was their age, I had a helmet and knee pads. Did I wear them? Of course, I did. Maybe for a month after Mr. Safety Officer at the bike rodeo at Gaisman park said that we would die if we didn’t wear a helmet. Most of the time I couldn’t be bothered to ride my bike or skate wearing those things. Skinned knees, elbows, and plenty of goose eggs taught me a lot about life. It gave me a better appreciation for what I was doing. These kids in the Upper West Side are lacking in such an education. It makes walking the dogs on the weekends interesting. Digby always lunges after these speeding little gremlins as they weave, run into, stop in front of people on the sidewalk. Most of the time their parents are about a city block behind laughing about something that isn’t funny with their other WASPy friends sporting a post-brunch glow. It’d be a real shame if Digby accidentally tackled one of these little speedsters. They probably need a little danger in their lives.
I mean it wouldn’t entirely be on purpose. I’m a decently strong chubby Paul Bunyan type, but Digby would be the bulldog equivalent of Babe the Ox. You try holding back 70 lbs of muscular bulldog determination. Not to mention his turd of a brother, Chevy, who has to wear a Hannibal Lector mask when we go outside now. It helps with his pulling, but he mainly wears the doggie bridle because he attempts to eat small dogs. Ok maybe “attempts to eat small dogs” is a little harsh. As I’ve stated before, I’m pretty sure he has PTSD and these dogs just remind him of the ones that used to pick on him as a puppy. On the other hand, Digby’s problem is that he is just too friendly and too strong. I guess he would be a great attack dog, but I doubt you could get him to bite anyone. When we are anything off- leash and I start running, he will chase after me but not to catch me or anything. He will get up to pace parallel with me and then quickly cross and attempt to spear/tackle me. It’s almost like he watches too much football.
Anyways, these scooter kids better watch out. I doubt any of them play football.