It’s one-thirty. I read in A Box of Matches how, for writing at night, Nicholson Baker made his computer screen dark, with barely visible text, so the bright white screen/page didn’t distract him. I thought of the old WordPerfect blue screen, which is lower contrast, and familiar, besides. But I couldn’t set it up tonight, so I had to turn the brightness control way down low.

Our old neighborhood group met tonight, trying to re-form. Reform is the topic of course, even if the word isn’t spoken. At bottom of every complaint is a wish that people, government, things were different. I bit my tongue at the tree planting, the neighborhood watch, the block party suggestions. Actually, when I could, I said to whomever was making the proposal, “So, you’ll get that going for next month?” I have totally done my time. I did suggest that everyone focus on just one extra little thing – one trashy alley next to theirs, one strip of sidewalk beyond their own. NB, email Susan & ask her to be in charge of the Arbor Day membership.

After the meeting, I found Katie in tears. The kids across the street were having an impromptu party and being older and generally badly behaved, sneered and smarted off when she asked if she could cross over to join them. So she had to stay on her side of the street and watch them play music and have soda. I didn’t like telling her no when they relented after a half hour, but this wasn’t the first time it’s happened. Inside, later, I reminded her that if she let them treat her badly and still went to play with them, they’d probably do it some more.

She’s got a school friend right now who does the passive-aggressive teasing. Katie says, “She teases me but she’s just kidding. She doesn’t really mean it.” I don’t want her going along with this girl later, when (and I think I can tell it’s not going to be if) serious teasing starts. I did some small amount of it in school, and hate to remember it now. So, I’m sincerely sorry, Donna L, for the name-calling in seventh grade gym.

There’s not many children in this neighborhood I’d choose for my kids’ friends. I remember several ambivalent relationships with the neighborhood kids in my childhood. They were always there, so you had a lot of contact with them all. Sometimes you fought; sometimes you played. It took till junior high to realize that you just hated some of their guts. And once in a while, one you hated turned out okay. I wish I could reform all the children on my block. I’d ask the Smiths to quit yelling at their boys, so the boys wouldn’t be such screamers. I’d make the boasting bully be nice. And I’d get Mr. Jones to bring his two indoors after 9:00, and keep much closer tab on them the rest of the time. Wonder what they’d like to change about my kids. (I know that the old screeching granny would like Evan to quit making campfires in the backyard. I’d like that too, as a matter of fact. I’ve bribed him again with the prospect of homemade torches when we actually go camping this summer. I’ll have to bring some rubbing alcohol this year.)

You can’t keep them from associating from the people they live with. Well, you can, I guess, if you want them to write wry memoirs of their bizarre childhoods, and/or to suffer lifelong alienation issues. Well, that last might come from something else. In that spirit, we have let Evan make a new friend, a nice enough boy who reveals something unsettling about his background every time we talk. We even let an ex-prostitute from down the street take the boys and Katie to church on Sunday (but I must admit it might not have happened had I known this fact in advance.) It was the new friend’s mother. She’s glad she found a church to keep her on the straight & narrow, she told me Sunday afternoon. Everything is all right with her now. And maybe it is.