Boy Meets World

At a get-together last week, the day the heart-breaking truth of what had become of the little Brooklyn boy Leibby Kletzky came out, a discussion cropped up about a family--relatives, I think of my host and hostess--allowing their 12-year-old son to travel by train into Jersey City unaccompanied by an adult for a daily program at the same high school the boy will coincidentally be attending in September. There was strong condemnation all around for any mode of getting around by kids of any age and at any time of day other than riding in a car driven by their parents. For me, it was one of those, "hello, I'm sitting right here and can HEAR YOU moments," as everyone who was there knows the boy takes the train every day, too. Whether or not they were intending to send me a message of either concern or disapproval notwithstanding, I got to thinking about why I am willing to let the boy board a train in the 'burbs, transfer in Newark and land ultimately in Jersey City when others think it unimaginable.

My father tells me stories all the time about the various sights he'd see and adventures he'd have when at the age of 6 or 7, he would board a trolley in Jersey City all alone to visit his grandmother in Hoboken. By age 9 or 10 he was leading other kids on expeditions to Coney Island via Ferry and the NYC subway. To these stories, I react as my friends did--with disapproval of my grandmother's judgement. He'll say, but times were different. I'll think, but weirdos still existed. Then I remembered that I was riding buses in Jersey City with a same-age friend at age 10 and it didn't seem so outlandish anymore (OK, 6 or 7 still does).

Are there weirdos out there? Absolutely. By and large are they going to capture kids and dismember them? No. Will the boy encounter the occasional deviant, a menacing-looking stranger, an aggressive pan-handler, a would-be pickpocket, a dealer offering drugs? I think so. He has already. But I rode the train everyday as a young woman--aka a magnet for weirdos--and these encounters were scant and manageable. By and large, riders of public transportation are just people getting to where they are going. I think in the rarefied world of the suburbs, people tend to forget this. Kids are so insulated from the real world that a train full of strangers becomes a train full of predators. If the parents think so, the kids will certainly think so.

Both the girl and the boy will drone on about my overprotectiveness over the years. And yes, I've pointed out every scary edge they could fall off, every germ potential they might encounter and the uselessness of every lightweight coat they've ever worn. I can't think about the girl driving too much and feel like I should medicate myself when either of them are flying. The mayor and I were a wreck when the boy started riding the train last year. The mayor would call me when he spotted him heading toward the train, spying on him from his office window in Jersey City, and I'd call him back when "the package" alighted again in town. But, the boy never knew it. He felt the confidence we had in his ability to negotiate his expanding world, even if we didn't fully at first. And I think that is a part of our job as parents, to guide our children incrementally toward independence and self-confidence. In that regard (and in many other regards) we cannot help but revel in our success with the girl. She breaks boundaries and succeeds beyond our wildest expectations every day. We expect nothing less of the boy and are preparing him accordingly.

While I fervently hope I don't live to regret the chances I allow the boy to take, I prefer that risk to having him live to regret chances he was too timid to take because I made him that way.

Sounding Off

Last month I promised (threatened) to write about all the things that annoy me about living in the suburbs. But I have decided to reduce it to one overriding complaint--NOISE. I have a low tolerance for noise. As a result of the pressures in my head from coughing throughout my babyhood, I lost an eardrum in my right ear. Hearing in my left ear will not win a prize, either, but I do not seem or feel impaired. I put it down to the concept that you can't miss what you never had. Doctors have offered me hearing aids promising great results, but I am loathe to follow through. I have always lived in a quiet world and I really like it here.

Enter the suburbs. I have never been more bothered by noise than I am living here. Perhaps it is the constantly shattered expectation of quiet that makes this worse by far than the city, but it is undeniably worse. Right now for example, I'm am sitting in a lovely spot of my own creation. My little backyard has a pretty redwood deck festooned with flowers and plants--all my favorite varieties, comfy outdoor furniture and my bird feeders. My freshly bathed dogs are by my side and I can look beyond my computer screen to a lovely little, newly mulched garden beyond. The only sound is the faint tinkling of a delicate glass wind chime, bird chatter and a dog barking in the distance. It's all the paradise I need. And yet, it is frequently off limits to me on account of NOISE. Any minute, and I can never know when, a landscaper's truck might pull up and in the blink of an eye it's paradise lost. There seem to be no limits as to when someone can make noise, how loud it can get and how long it can last. Landscapers arrive across the street as early as 7:30 AM ready to assault nature and my quietude with full mowers, blowers, whackers and trimmers ablaze. Sit out on a Sunday morning and there's no stopping a neighbor from marching out to the garage and firing up every noisy device therein. Today as I filled my coffee cup intending to drink it al fresco, an enormous truck parked outside the house and idled for about 40 minutes as it made a delivery of God knows what using a forklift. I am sure whatever was deposited in my neighbor's driveway is going to result in even more noise as it is built, installed or applied. Yesterday it was a different neighbor with a power-washer that drove me indoors. It never ends.

And it's not just me being overly sensitive. It's become a running joke among the Mayor, the boy and me. No sooner do we get comfortable outside than boom, we encounter some form of decibel challenge. I would have thought that my reduced hearing would make this all the more bearable for me, but it doesn't. All the hearing loss has done is make me appreciate a quiet world that increasingly does not exist. Shopping at the mall the other day for the boy amid the insistent, obnoxious music at Hollister and Aeropostale had me running  home for the xanax. We recently spend a beautiful day at Great Adventure where my only problem all day was that there was no place to come in from the loud voices and piped music.

In my mind, the greatest hero of the present day is going to be the person who invents the silent motor that powers all the lawn taming, hedge trimming, debris clearing devices we use to beat our environments into submission. In fact, I think that same individual ought to be considered for the Nobel PEACE prize.