I know that for some people, (myself included), the new year doesn’t actually start in January—it starts in September, with the beginning of school. For me, however, the disconnect is even more extreme: as far as I’m concerned, the real start of the year is when you see a kid kicking through piles of dead leaves on their way to school. This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever, since I grew up in Phoenix, and the only reason there might be dead leaves on the ground in Phoenix is because someone forgot to water their yard, but there you have it. Who knows? Maybe it was something I saw once on one of those After School Specials that were always on when I was a kid, one of those “Sarah T: Diary of a Teenage Alcoholic” type things. (Do they still have those? As I remember, they were wonderfully dramatic and emotional. Sort of like emotional homeopathy for your average teenager.) Anyway, no matter where the idea came from, that has always been my own personal clue that a new school year (and therefore, a new year) has begun: kid + leaves + kicking.
Notice I don’t say kid + leaves + driving. Seeing a kid sit in the back seat while his mother pilots an SUV through a pile of dead leaves just doesn’t cut it for me; it’s got to be kid + leaves + kicking. Nothing else will do, which is why I have always made my kids walk or ride their bikes to school. (You can still kick leaves while you’re on a bike—trust me.)
That’s also why I was so dismayed when I read about the child who was struck by a car while he was riding his bike to school the other morning; riding his bike to school, I might add, on the bike path. Yeah, I know: kids are idiots. They don’t always look both ways before they cross the street, they don’t come to a full stop at stop signs, and they can become so wrapped up in things like reading “Do you like me? Check ‘yes’ or ‘no’” notes that they sometimes giggle themselves right out into traffic, but I think that we can all agree that everyone, idiot or not, has a right to feel secure while riding their bike on the bike path.
Of course, it’s true that I don’t know the whole story. I do know, however, that of the two people involved, the child and the driver, only the driver was issued a citation, which leads me to believe that the child had a better grasp of our traffic laws than the adult driver did.
I also know that, supposedly, the child (although not his bike) is going to be fine. Which is great.
Unfortunately, though, that doesn’t change the fact that the whole incident happened in the first place, and will therefore probably lead to a lot more parents keeping their kids from riding their bikes and walking to school. This, of course, is a very bad thing—not just because the extra twenty-five minutes spent in the SUV every day will no doubt contribute to the escalating rates of childhood obesity and nature deficit disorder our kids are already experiencing, but because the less kids there are riding their bikes and walking to school, the less chance there is for me to see a kid kicking leaves on their way there, and thus, the less chance there is for my year to officially start. (What? Why yes, it is all about me. Thanks for asking.)
If it gets bad enough, this year might never start for me at all. Which would play hell with my taxes, not to mention my Christmas shopping—and my social life.
Hold on a minute: I think I feel an After School Special coming on
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