I wanted to peek into the window of a new furniture store in town so that’s what we did. But something looked a little strange. The beautiful layout was marred by an overturned lamp. That’s when I noticed a side window was smashed in and there was broken glass all over the pavement.
I called the cops and we went on with our day. But that was just the first minor crime incident of yesterday!
Much later at home we heard a POP from somewhere outside. It sounded like a rock against a window pane but it was those damn “bike kids” as we call them. Our house is neighbour to a plaza and we’re up on a bit of a rise. The fenceline is also up high and boys on bikes like to zip up that hill and catch some airtime as they twist their bikes to head back down to the asphalt. However they also hit the fence boards and pop them in half. We already have one missing and that POP was another one busting in half. So before our evening stroll we visited the trio. (There are about a dozen who do this, in various groups and we can never really tell which are which) Derek asked them to please stop driving across our lawn and “If you break the fence, fix it!”
We walked away muttering and I suggested a social experiment. “What if we piled some board and put a hammer and some nails out and they could fix the fence when they broke it. Empower them!” Derek shook his head. “Then they’d be TRYING to break the boards and they’d steal the hammer.” True. Bad idea.
We will replace the broken boards and I believe we should keep on replacing them as often as we need to. The Mayor of Chicago rid his subway system of graffiti this way. He made it a priority to remove or cover up every “tag” on every subway car as soon as it was painted on. Eventually the vandals gave up. I believe in the same philosophy for the fence. Even though the aim isn’t to break the boards I think a demonstration that we care about its appearance enough to keep fixing it, is important.
After our walk we returned home to a fresh and very obvious bike track across our lawn. Damn bike kids!