Have you seen them?

They are all over the neighborhood. They seemed to have just popped up but I’m noticing more and more of them around here.

Little green men (though they could be women or some other non-sexual being) with little red hats (I’ve not gotten close enough to see if it reads “Make America Great Again”) or maybe it is some sort of hair color holding red flags and being motionless. They may have arrived from the P.O.D. ships that landed last springtime or maybe they just crept in from the dark because they glow in the sunlight.

There was one and then another and then groups of them around the neighborhood. They all stand silent guardians of where children play. Perhaps they are children who were bad and were magically turned into plastic like Lot’s wife at Sodom. Perhaps they are teaching the children some coded message adults can’t hear.

More children used to play in the streets but I don’t see many now. There are too many playgrounds, ballparks and clubhouses for organized and supervised play. Before televisions and Nintendo kids were kicked out of the house to go out and play in the street. The nerdy kids would go to the library or sit under a tree and read a book while the others would kick a ball or jump a rope or hit each other with sticks while an older sibling or an adult on the block controlled the action with a shout. Traffic was less then and blocks of kids became bonded in their play. There was even competition between the 34^th Street ‘Bombers’ and the 33^rd Street “SmashMouth Boys” who would meet on neutral territory with father’s rooting on each team. Their special jerseys were uniforms that became street gang colors.

Back in the day there were signs to tell the passerby that this was a zone of “Slow Children Playing”. I just thought the kids were physically or mentally disabled and couldn’t move fast like the other kids. The sign just made travelers that they may have to stop for kids kicking a ball or chasing butterflies or rolling wheelchairs across their passage at a slow pace so smoke ‘em if you got ‘em and wait for the kids to clear the area. Don’t want to think about ‘Steel Plates Ahead’.

Seems today kids come home from school and stay in a secluded area playing with others online in the blue haze of a dark bedroom. The old adage of getting the kids out of the house for fresh air and exercise has gone the way of Halloween visits. Sleds and bicycles may be antiques replaced by the latest version of ‘Candy Crush’ or ‘Angry Birds’. Sunburns, poison ivy, mosquitoes and random encounters with snakes will become stories for grandparents.

Now some kids still gather in the streets. These hooligans still check your cars for leftovers, spray the random walls with street art expression, test the latest substance passed down by an entrepreneur making a buck and occasionally doing a smash and grab from some local immigrant’s convenient store. Perhaps the little green folks are warning kids that the streets are not safe?

Today I saw two that were knocked over. I don’t know if the children had beaten them up or they had been hit by an automobile or just fell over dead. I didn’t stick around for recitation but will see if they are up and about tomorrow.

In the meantime, be on alert for these little day-glow green folks guarding an area for children to play free of danger. Should we put them into the halls of schools?