Monday, April 18, 2011

The Toddler vs. 500 Years of Custom and Law

Poor Nicholas is having a tough time adjusting to being on the wrong end of Anglo-American conceptions of private property.

We went for a walk last week around our neighborhood (the nice part with houses), and got an earful of Nicholas's ability to identify playgrounds.  He desperately wanted to go, but we were trying just to take a quick walk (it was getting toward sunset), and we decided not to head in the direction of the park.  So Nicholas amused himself by asking to play on other people's slides.  And he's got a good eye too.  Not only did he pick out the ones where the play set is on the street side of a house, he was picking up some that we had trouble finding, 50-100 feet from where we were standing behind houses in people's backyards.

Sadly, we could not let him run loose in other people's yards, the 80% of them with fences notwithstanding.  Oh well. Someday, just maybe, you'll get to the other side, little boy.

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