Alone in the Car: Children and Adults

This is a favorite theme of mine, so it will probably pop up now and again.
I don't understand why adults think that they are always ahead of the game over children.
I am not talking about the common sense things like driving a car, cooking over a hot stove,
or climbing a ladder. I am talking about things that we learned as children, but discount as adults.

I work in a busy section of town with lots of traffic lights, traffic congestion, and re-routing of traffic due to construction. Multi-lanes of cars go this way and that as they hurry to their destination. Electronic boxes at the intersections have signs: a hand outlined in red for "Stop" and a person in a walking position outlined in white for "Go". Pedestrian traffic are to obey the electronic boxes and/or traffic lights.

Of course, some people do not. They feel they can cross the street at any time in the crosswalk as long as there are no cars. I wait. I wait until the signals and the boxes tell me to go. I do this because I remember what I was taught to do, what is the law, and what I have taught children to obey.

I have often wondered if those hypocritical adults would cross the street if they were holding on to a 3 year old's hand. Would they stop and have the typical conversation/reminder about what the rules are about crossing the street, about being safe? Or would they tell that child there are rules, but they don't have to obey them? Or maybe the child is old enough to know and asks why they are not waiting for the light to turn?

Children get it right. We got it right once too. And it is o.k. to do the right thing now.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I
learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school
mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things
I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing
and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and
stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The
roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but
we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the
Styrofoam cup--they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you
learned--the biggest word of all--LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love
and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult
terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world
it would be if we all--the whole world--had cookies and milk about three
o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or
if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are-- when you go out into the
world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

--Robert Fulghum