The Park and Selfishness...

A few months ago - the park across the street from our house was burned down. The local belief is that a bunch of teenagers did it - they stuffed newspapers into the crawling tube and caught it on fire - burned the sucker to the ground. There are two parts of the park - the "big kids" park and the "baby" park. The baby park is what was destroyed - as were all the trees.

It was pretty scary - it happened in the middle of the night, burning leaves were flying through the air. The elementary school is right next to the park and there are several houses that surround the park - ours is across the street, but several others are "attached" to the park by their backyards. They were all outside with hoses trying to spray their trees, yards, and houses down so they wouldn't catch fire if a burning leaf came sailing into their yard (it was right during the hottest and driest part of the summer.)

This was really bad. They didn't catch the kids that did it (but, we all can pretty much guess who they are - our town isn't that big.)

Ok - that leads us to today...

The school newspaper came out and there is an article about the arson and there are quite a few comments from my son's class. Most of them say they are sad that the babies won't have a place to play and that the people that did it should go to jail.

example:

"I think the people who burned the baby park down are so mean and aggressive."

"I feel sorry for the little kids. I mean where are they supposed to go without getting hurt?"

"I feel very, very upset because they burned down the little kid's playground. I think they should get a spanking in public and say sorry."

There are many quotes like this. Being mad at the people who did it and being sad for the babies.

Here is my son's quote:

"I feel really, really mad and sad. Now I can't play football. I can't go backwards on the slide. I can't talk back and forth with the speakers."

Huh....

This is the only comment that says something selfish.

I think we may be getting closer to the root of all self. (keep your kids community activities coming! I'd LOVE to have something to help others that may not be as fortunate as we are.)