Last evening was so beautiful I decided to take Kira to the park to kill time before bath and bedtime – one can only take so much Nick Jr.  There was a huge party going on at the north end of the park including at 40-50 little dark haired children who weren’t speaking English.

image I like this little park. There’s two separate climbing/slide structures, a giant fake rock in the middle to climb on, musical drum-like things and a splash pad. What I didn’t like was the ton of trash this party dumped all over. The playground was littered with empty soda cans and little chip bags, party gift bags and other assorted garbage. None of the various trash cans were full, it’s just that these kids would bring crap over from their party and when they were done would just drop it where they were and run off. Yes, twice I watched children old enough to know better finish off a product and toss the container over their shoulder.

In the hour we were there, not one parent instructed a child to pick up their garbage nor did they do it themselves. I watched a group of 4 boys jump off the big rock into the sand (about 6 feet) and jam sticks into the sand to show their distance, climb up and jump again. How they managed to do that without breaking a leg or poking an eye out, I don’t know. Again, no parents around advising them of the stupidity of such moves. There were three or four toddlers that would wander by me at different times without an adult in site. One manged to cross the whole park before Mama finally got off her ass and yelled at a bigger kid to go get her.

And Kira was overwhelmed by the hoards of wild sugar-infused kids who all knew each other and kept running her over. When none responded to her attempts at friendship, she ended up playing in a corner of the sandy area by herself.  Time to go home.

I’m tempted to go by today and see if possibly they cleaned up before they left last night. I’m guessing no.

And they wonder why some of us don’t want them here. Disgust?