Lurking on the List…

I have something to admit. I still follow the parent list from my old neighborhood in California. This is largely because it sometimes entertains me. My friend Robin and I get a lot of laughs from the privileged ladies who post, looking to share their “wonderful” nannies, amazing carpenters or lovely gardeners, services for people who have more money than we and most people in this country ever will. Much more money. The list rarely has anything informative to share about parenting – fighting croup, dealing with temper tantrums, tackling mean girls in pre-school. Nothing. I have probably posted twice since my friend Mina started the board, once about a preschool and another time because I was pissed off that a mom had completely dissed the local ice cream shop owner (accusing him of sounding stoned when she called to complain about his tardiness in delivering her daughter’s princess cake to the local park for her birthday party). I understand the mom was pissed. Her daughter’s cake was VERY late (not that any of the kids at this party noticed while they were running around playing hide and seek and sucking down juice boxes). So she went to the board and WENT OFF on this guy, imploring us to never lick ice cream at his shop again. The thing is, anyone who tries to take down a small business owner for such a stupid offense just rubs me the wrong way, particularly because in her post, she accused the shop owner of sounding stoned when she called him.  This is a guy who makes all the ice cream in his tiny shop – amazing ice cream mind you – and delivers the stuff, too. The truth is, he probably walks around in an exhausted haze most of the time, (wishing he had the time to light a joint) and lives on about two hours sleep per week. Anyhow, I spoke my mind  and totally pissed this woman off. Whatever. I guess the lesson with this one is never mess with a mommy and her cake.

Now, the ladies are up in arms that black people are roaming the neighborhood, ringing doorbells. Very few people of color live in my old neighborhood and I secretly think these guys are doing this to mess with the rich white ladies, but so far, thankfully, no one has been robbed or hurt. Perhaps there is fear due to a rash of muggings that occurred in a nearby neighborhood last summer that were particularly awful. People seemed to be mugged every day for a stretch and I was even a bit nervous because my husband got off the train every night in that neighborhood, where the muggers were hanging out. It also seemed like the police weren’t catching these guys. So maybe there was cause for alarm over the ding dongers, but the overall tone of the posts on the mom’s list was: BLACK men roaming neighborhood. LOOK OUT! Hide your stuff. Turns out, the black person in question wears the same thing when he shows up at the door, so it’s probably just one guy roaming the hood. He works alone. What he actually does to people (Leers, lurks, cases the joint) is the question. To be fair, a few moms asked to tone down the hysteria just a little bit and stop identifying the door bell ringers as black. Others said they were perfectly within their rights to identify these ding dong ditchers as black men. How else would the neighbors know who to look for? The angry cake lady shared a few words of wisdom about not letting your kids and caregivers answer the door if they don’t know who’s there (Thanks for that! Don’t share your ice cream cake with him, either) The original poster than asked for everyone to stop posting about her original post already. She was done talking about it, of course, until another unsolicited black person rings her doorbell.