Laralee went to a presentation at school about “Gang Activity in Longmont”. Who knew that a cow town like this has a lot of gang activity (apparently it does), and more to the point, who knew that some of it is focused on the middle school (!) next door to the elementary school where Alex and Kyra go.
She came home with a bunch of handouts and information about how to determine if your child has joined a gang (he acts tough, swears, and gets tattoos). It even had a brief dictionary of gang terms, for those of us who don’t know what “kickin’ it” means. Pretty weird stuff.
What’s scary is thinking about how there are gang problems at a middle school… in My Day, I think the worst violence you could ever see at school was when two guys decided to have a fight after school (“psst, Jim Haney is going to fight Dave Hobold in the parking lot at 3:15”) and you could see them shove each other a few times before the vice-principal showed up. Today schools worry about knives, guns, drugs, and the like. Yikes.