Taggers

Living in San Francisco presents some challenges that all my suburban friends know not of. For example, we don’t have an easily accessible back yard into which I can banish my kids when they are getting rowdy. We do have a back yard—and for that I’m very grateful. But getting there requires trekking down two flights of stairs, and is not conveniently located off the kitchen (where we’ve already established I spend every waking moment of my day.)

So my kids get to play in the front yard. Which also means that they are basically playing on the street because our yard is little more than a 6’x6’ patch of green space. To keep children amused in such a lush and inviting environment, there is side walk chalk. The toy of choice for children of the concrete jungle.

My kids love their chalk, and why not? They write their names, draw trains, play hop scotch, even outline each other’s bodies (so that it looks like our house is a perpetual crime scene).

The only real rules I have with regard to the chalk are 1) you may only deface the sidewalk in front of our house, and 2) no drawing on the house itself—only the actual sidewalk.

“OK guys, here you go. You can draw, but remember: not on the house.”

“Got it.”

10 minutes pass, and while I can’t hear anything disturbing, I stick my head outside to see what they are up to.

“Umm…what is this?! Did I NOT just tell you that you may NOT draw all over the house?!”

I’m met with blank stares.

Apparently my children don’t speak English very well. (Had I realized this, I would have marked accordingly on our SF Unified school application form. Maybe then we would have been placed in a school of choice.)