Sad

Rugby practice has been moved to Hazlewood these past few weeks. I'm still not that familiar with a lot of the Pittsburgh neighborhoods, but evidently this is not a good one. Last night at practice, we had to kick out some kids who were playing football and goofing around on the field.

So what did they do? First, they huddled on the sidelines yelling rude things to us. "Run, girls! Run!" Some of them even trailed behind us as we ran 200-meter sprints, yelling things at us. That made me angry of course.

Then, out of nowhere, the men's team went tearing down the street screaming. I thought they were just doing some new sort of drill, but no. They were chasing down thieves. The ratty imps were stealing our balls. Who the heck knows what else they stole from us. At the end of practice, they stole some more balls and the team had to sprint off after them again.

The whole thing made me really, really sad. My heart is sad for kids who grow up with no other models of how to behave. How can we change the world? How can we raise our children to be respectful? Why weren't those kids playing for a neighborhood soccer team or hanging out under supervision at a youth center? Because there are no organized activities for them and there is no youth center. Sometimes I think we should just drop all funding for projects dealing with kids over 10 and just focus on saving them while they are young. Oh, what I wouldn't give to save the world.