Four Things

Today has had an interesting and somewhat disconcerting start.  First, while driving my son to school, I see two kids at an intersection.  The boy looked around my son's age and the girl looked like she was probably in kindergarten.  They had helmets, pads, and other safety gear, holding their bikes waiting to cross from the corner they were standing on to the opposite one.  Can you guess their missing safety equipment?  If you said "adult supervision" you'd be correct.  No parent or even an adult looked like they were watching them.  Essentially, their parents let their son to take charge of his younger sister's safety.  Am I being paranoid when I say that was the stupidest fucking thing I saw in a while?  I was a little appalled.  Did I stop to help them?  Well, no.  I'm sure they have done it many times.  I just couldn't put my mind into whatever kind that could allow that to happen.  Next, when we were at school, waiting for the buzzer, there were a few kids waiting inside without an adult.  Of course, that's fine.  Why wouldn't it be?  School is supposed to be a place a kid SHOULD be without a parent around.  However, one teacher was passing by and said the kids had to wait outside if they weren't with a parent.  What the fuck!?  Really?  This also paralyzed my brain trying to understand that logic.  I could think of no reason this should be proper, especially in terms of keeping them safe.  Are they worried about crowding the doorway as some inconvenience or crowding, or is it a fire hazard?  It didn't compute when I tried to model the sense of it against the safety of those children.  Third, I giggled at something which some might find funny or maybe slightly racist.  There's this Asian dad and daughter that I see come in the morning.  What's funny is the fact his daughter is as tall as her dad, while probably they are proportionately triple in age ratio.  He had to be in his forties or so, while she was obviously in single digits.  It was funny in a semi-cute way, I suppose.  The last thing was when one of the children that act as crossing guards flipped me the peace sign when I passed.  I returned in kind, so it was a nice way to wrap up the madness into perspective on the way out.