My seven-year-old really wanted to go to a local park I call the toddler’s park. The jungle gyms are low, made for little ones. When we got there, I was surprised to see it was full of delinquents.
Almost everyone there was breaking the law. The lawbreakers were not young punks drinking beer on a park bench, but suburbany, middle-aged outlaws.
In one grassy clearing I saw an older woman in a white polo shirt, and big sunglasses tossing a ball to her two dogs that ran loose across the field in front of the children’s swings. Her balding accomplice in a light blue golf shirt and crisp matching khaki pants, watched on passively. The nearby sign clearly read “no dogs allowed in playground.”
On a regular day, I imagine these folks chiding me, reminding me of the rules and proper behaviour. But here in Charles Caccia Park, Karen and Darren break the law with authority. They treat the grassy plain by the children’s splash pad like their own backyard.
I look at the City sign, and I look at them. Then at a woman walking her dog on a leash. And then at a guy with an unleashed dog. Then two other dog owners meet, their dogs play together.
One guy lets his dog play in the jungle gym itself.
My daughter spots a large dog by the jungle gym. Unaware of the illegal activity upsetting me, she starts running towards it, to pet it. I look closely. It’s a Doberman Pinscher. I call out to her to stop. But she kept trying to pet one dog after another.
Kids love dogs. That’s how kids are. But I’m from the dog-bitten 70s. Almost every kid I knew back then was bitten by a dog. And back then, in the matchup between kids vs dogs, kids always lost.
It’s a brave new world out there.
