Monday, May 10, 2010

Teaching them young

In the neighbourhood where one of my friends lives, one little girl is well on her way to becoming a statistic. She can't be more than 10 or 11 years old, but her parents have bought her a pink, electric Vespa-style scooter. Fair enough - those things are fun to play on, but this little girl rides her electric scooter on the street. More specifically, all over the street, mostly on the wrong side. She pays no attention to the other traffic and has apparently not developed a sense of self-preservation yet. Her parents clearly don't care about her though - they're never anywhere to be seen. This year things became even worse. Now they've bought her a cellphone, and yes - you've guessed it - now she rides the scooter one-handed, with My Little Cellphone clamped to her ear. So now she weaves in and out of the gutter and all over the wrong side of the road presenting a much larger target to turn into a hood ornament. Now I just want to report her parents to child services for dereliction of duty.