What Are We Gonna Do about All These Damn Kids?

You know what the worst thing about the coronavirus pandemic is? It's not the shortage of toilet paper, or the prospect of death. It's all these damn kids running around the neighborhood. What's wrong with kids running around the neighborhood, you might ask? What's the point of living in a neighborhood if you don't like people walking around?

Well, brother, these kids aren't alright. See, there used to be a gazebo in that park, but the kids systematically destroyed it. These kids throw rocks in the street. They tip over trashcans and prey upon the weak. There's no park bench because the kids fucked it up. These kids are loud. They swear. They look like they were spawned in a darkened alley beneath a garbage heap. They are parentless. They have no respect for authority.

When I was a kid, we did what people told us to. Our parents weren't drug addicts. Life had a rosy sheen to it. Mr. Rogers was my next door neighbor. Nothing bad ever happened. Everyone loved to see us out on the street, bright and energetic with the young life bound within us. When I see these gangs of feral street children, I think what went wrong?

I've taken to sitting on top of my roof with a paintball gun. There they go, a pack of wild degenerates. I dare you to mess with my garbage can, punk. Go ahead. Touch my car. See where it gets you.

There are spikes on my fence for a reason. My mission in life is now to annihilate the park across the street, to make it unlivable so that the children will not congregate there. The police are no allies. They gently chastise. They know their authority has eroded as the system has broken down.

These children are probably outside because their homes are unlivable. There is no school for them. They have no concrete prospects. To me they are the other, a menace, a threat looming on the horizon. My own prospective has become damaged, broken beyond repair.

Goddamnit, nobody better touch my flowers. This old man has had enough. His ability to empathize with other people has vanished, as have his social skills. Keep your children away, I say. At least keep them out of the park. In better times, mothers would push their children on swings. Now the kids just smoke pot.

Someone make things how I remember them. I don't care care if those times never existed.