I’m not bragging or anything, but I’m pretty sure that I’m the “cool” mom on the street. On any given day, I have about 10 neighbor kids either in my house or on my property. But look at what we have to offer: dirt; more dirt; rocks; rebar, empty caulk guns, plastic conduit, and other various leftover construction crap; and more dirt. Our yard—though it is currently the eyesore of the street—is kid heaven . And the HUGE pile of topsoil occupying the middle of the front yard… forget about it. All kids within a half mile radius flock to our house like we have some sort of beacon on the roof. (Although the Carlson’s across the street just got a new kiddie pool, so that’s given me a break the last couple of days.) When the neighbor kids discovered the “beverage fridge” in the garage (stocked with Capri Suns and Gatorades), I had to start chasing them off the property at sundown, telling them to go home to their real mothers. Know this: If you provide dirt, rocks, and cold drinks, children will not leave except by force. At about 9 each night I go out on the deck, pick up a piece of sprinkler pipe (or a lightsaber… whichever is lying there), and proceed to chase kids out of the yard. I do it in a friendly manner, but I think they know that I mean business because they really do run. First Bob, then Bob Junior, then Tiny Tom, then Buck-tooth Bill (no, these are not fake “Internet names” I’m giving them. These are the names they actually call each other). They run over all of the empty Capri Sun packets they’ve left in the yard for me to clean up (their real mothers teach them no manners…) and they run home squealing and laughing. It’s what I do.

All of the moms around here are pretty awesome. Kids roam fairly freely from house to house, and we all just kind of try to look out for each other’s kids. It’s fine. It’s cool. Most days I end up “looking out” for other people’s kids, but when my kids go out, I know that there other moms who will look out for mine as well. Yesterday, though, something happened that really pissed me off. There is one child who is kind of the neighborhood vagabond child. I’m pretty sure every neighborhood has one. Ours is named … well, I’ll call him “Ned”. He is 6. He is the youngest in his family and he is neglected. Everyone in his family assumes that someone else in the family is watching “Ned”, when in actuality no one is watching “Ned”. One day last winter he showed up on my front steps with no shoes and no coat, and it was hailing outside. Oh yeah, he also hadn’t been fed any lunch. Yesterday he came over and played for a while. After an hour or so I told him that I had to run some errands, so he would have to go home. He said, “No one is home at my house.” I asked him where his mom was. “At work.” Dad? “At work.” Brother? “Don’t know.” Sister? “She was supposed to watch me but she went to Seven Peaks.” Seven Peaks is the local water park. So apparently teenage sister was supposed to watch “Ned”, but she got a better offer and just assumed that someone else in the neighborhood would watch him. Not with a call to anyone saying, “Could you watch Ned for a few hours”…no, he would just wander from house to house until someone got home around dinnertime. Seems kosher, right? I mean, if you can’t babysit yourself by the time you’re 6 years old, there must be something wrong with you.

No, there is something wrong with his family.

I called his house to see if there was really no one home (because, as a lot of neglected children do, Ned lies a lot). But sure enough, there was no answer. He tried his mom’s cell phone number. No answer. It occurs to me that if Ned were dying right there on my kitchen floor, there would be absolutely no way to get a hold of anyone in his family. I have no idea where they work. Ned could have been kidnapped hours ago, and no one would notice for another 5 hours until someone got home, called around the neighborhood, and eventually realized that he was really gone. I was so pissed. I chatted Jon at work and said, “I want to call Child Protective Services.” He said, “Do it.” I didn’t want to be an alarmist, but I’m thinking , if this kid really does end up disappearing one day, I’m going to feel awful knowing that I knew the day was coming and did nothing. So I look up the number and I sit there wondering if I’m overreacting. And I give him something to eat. Twenty minutes later I ask him for his mom’s cell number and I call it. She answers this time. “Hi, this is Suzanne Gale. Ned’s been at my house for a few hours, and I’ve been needing to leave and I told him to go home but he told me that no one was home to watch him. I just want to make sure someone is there before I send him out alone into the world.” She gives me a nervous laugh. “Yeah, well, I just had to run a quick errand and I’m on my way home right now and I’ll just come pick him up.” “Great.” Click. Quick errand my ass. He’d been at my house for well over an hour, and he was roaming the street even longer than that. He’d been alone for hours.

Am I overreacting? Do I call? Is Child Protective Services for harsher cases where kids are beaten? He’s not being beaten, he’s just ignored. When I chase off the other kids at night with a sprinkler pipe and a silly song, I’m half tempted to keep Ned and bring him inside and give him a bath, and clean pajamas, and a bed.

Tonight was “Cubannapolis” at Pack meeting. All of the boys had to build a car from a cardboard box and paint it to make it spiffy. Then they “wore” the car and raced around a field. There were pit stops. The Pit Crews (parents) had to “wash the windshield” (read: spray our sons in the face with a spray bottle and wipe it off with a paper towel), “refuel” (dump a dixie cup full of water in their mouths), and “change out the tires” (take off their butt-smelly shoes and put them back on). It was hilarious. Some of the boys, you could tell, had spent hours on their cars, making them look almost like actual cars. Intricate “flame” spray paint and what not. Ten minutes before Pack meeting I was taping on a rear spoiler and spray painting it because Jachin said his car looked like “a dumb blue box”. Well, nothing says race car like a spoiler. And he believed having a spoiler would make him run faster. Who am I to tell him that cutting out a rectangle of cardboard, painting it blue, and taping it to a box won’t make him run any faster?? And run, he did. Of course, the high quality spoiler fell off during the second lap, but he didn’t notice… so I did a quick ninja-pick-up and smacked it back on during the third lap.

Ultimately, he didn’t really place. Even the spoiler couldn’t make up for the 3 year age gap between him and some of the other runners. But it was stinking funny to watch.

(Note: Jachin is on the far left… and yes, he is wearing his car backwards…)

Like so many loved ones in denial, I ignored the signs: the i-n-c-r-e-d-i-b-l-y slow start up, the way he seemed to not want to respond to anything I wanted him to do.

Start–> Internet

Wait. Wait. Wait. I got pretty intimate with that little hourglass that hung around my screen for minutes on end. Finally my requests would “time out”. The time out is your computer’s way of telling you, “Dude, I have no intention of doing what you asked me to do. I can’t believe you sat around waiting that long… but I’m not even going to pretend that I’m trying anymore.”

Then last night it happened. The Blue Screen of Death. Chances are you’ve witnessed this horrendous site at one point or another. There I sat. I had just written (poorly, and without spell check) my “Rickrolled” post and I hit the “publish” button. I waited, and I waited, like I am so accustomed to doing. Then I started getting “not responding” things all over. Nothing worked. Nothing would shut off. Nothing . So I just turned off ‘ol Blue Brick, thinking he may just need a kick in the pants. I then turned him back on. Bright. Blue. Screen. Telling me that something very bad had happened. *crap* Turn it off, turn it on again. Same thing. Tried running it in “Safe Mode”. Nope. He wouldn’t even do that.

Blue Brick suffered a fatal error. Time of death: 10:05 pm.

Yeah, he was old. Yeah, he weighed 18 pounds. But he and I spent countless hours writing blog drivel and children’s stories together. We spent almost that same number of hours perusing the virtual pages of Crate and Barrel, the the virtual clothing racks of Old Navy. I loved Blue Brick. I loved the Lego Knights sticker that my son stuck on there; it was “Vladek”. Maybe I can salvage the sticker. What will be infinitely harder to salvage are all of the family pictures, and the YA novel I started 5 years ago, and the rhyming picture book that I started 2 years ago, and oh… my bookmarks.

Here I now sit composing this post (and ninja-editing the “Rickrolled” post) on my husband’s much sleeker, much silvery-er, laptop. It’s skinny. It weighs almost nothing (you can’t see me, but right now I’m balancing it on the tip of my pinky). And this laptop means nothing to me. It’s no Blue Brick. There is no “Vladek” sticker. I press buttons and it does things. Promptly. Like it doesn’t even have to think about it. There is no drowsy lag. It is efficient and quick. And cold. No personality.

Damn you, Blue Brick!!! Why?? Why??

It is a sad day in this house. I am crying. The kids ask me what is wrong. I say something about a death. “Is grandma ok?” they ask. Yeah, grandma, bless her old bones, is fine. It’s Blue Brick. “Who?” They look puzzled. Blue Brick! The entity I spent so many hours clicking away with while I ignored your cries for food and attention and band-aids! “oh, yeah. him.”

Yes him. Rest in peace, Blue Brick.