What do you have to do to get sidewalks installed?
Yesterday I ventured outside the house for one of the rare occasions that I ever leave my shell. I wanted to show Jared a safe route to ride his bike to his friends house...less than a mile away.
I am walking Jared and Jaiden are on their bikes and we set off...I thought our street was dangerous with crazy teen drivers but now I know otherwise...our street is a calm oasis.
As soon as we turn onto the side street...mind you there is only 3 streets between point A to point B so this shouldn't be all that difficult but there are NO sidewalks. So as soon as we turn onto the "main drag" of our inter neighborhood street we get a taste of whats to come as two cars pass us going separate directions...this gets tricky because they have to finagle around us pedestrian speed bumps. At the intersector road comes a teen driver zooming up the hill, he does a U turn, drops off his friend and screaches off again....yes all the while I am standing beside the road holding back my two young children from his path...I got a little miffed so I yelled out a choice word that I should not have in front of my children...it started with an I...and ended with a T Oh, also there are NO POSTED SPEED SIGNS...does this mean you can drive any speed? Obviously to a teen driver it does. The one sign that says SLOW CHILDREN is pushed over into a tree so it is totally obscured from view from the road...I wanted to pull on it to see if I could set it up straight again but I feared letting go of Jaidens bike in case she veered off into the street while I wasn't looking.
So we work our way down the hill, over the coulee bridge up another hill, around parked cars on the street and to another intersection. All the while traffic is zipping by us and staring at us like we have 4 heads..is it a crime to be outside in summer? I was wondering that this weekend as we drove around town and there were no children at the park or riding their bikes (even in the neighborhoods with sidewalks)
At the intersection we cross over and go the next few feet to our destination. Friends parents are not home so we turn back home, get to the corner, friends parents return...another attempt to work our way through the traffic...visit for a while and reminisce about the days when we could ride our bikes without fear all the while seeing our children playing nearby and nearly getting taken out a few times by the traffic. This is INSIDE of a residential neighborhood, we do not live on a main street....shouldn't our children be able to ride their bikes to their friends houses to play? It was an attempt to get Jared outside and away from the tv and computer but after our experience last night I think maybe it would be better to keep him indoors. He is missing out on so much of his childhood and the restless abandon of being a boy. Whatever happend to adventure, tree climbing, bike races, dirt pies? Now summer is all about 24/7 cartoon network and video games. What can we do to change this mentality and make our world safe again for our children to be children?
3 comments:
I don't have an answer for you, but completely agree. Now, as far as the bike goes though, I was actually hit by a truck when I was 13 riding my bike so I am even more leery than most about that! But I still agree that our children's lives are nothing like ours growing up that's for sure. what can we do to change it? no idea. :(
Thankfully, our little town is very friendly for walkers and bike riders, but it is definitely the exception rather than the rule.
call me paranoid but im too afraid to allow my boys to venture outside the house gate other than taking the school bus that they dont even know how to ride bicycle. sad isnt it?
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