Reinventing The (Cheese) Wheel

Newfound facts about suburbia: all kids ride scooters down the street.

All the time.

So I went online and found a great scooter for Ella at Toys R Us.

Molded safety plastic, child-tested, no-slip cushioned grips.

My wife and Ella come back with a pink one. Not the one I’d called ahead and saved.

I look at Anne and she whispers, “It came with plastic sunglasses and a fake cell phone…”.

It’s true. I unpack everything on the back porch for assembly and amid tiny wheels and seat stickers there’s a small pair of pink sunglasses, matching plastic cell phone and a cute backpack.

Essentially, they bought pink sunglasses for $40 and they came with a scooter.

Newfound facts about unpacking: whatever you need most at any given time has not yet been unpacked. Like a screwdriver. For assembling oh, kids scooters?

I rummage around in the drawer and all I can find is this 3” walnut handled cheese knife. Fine, whatever.

So I’m on the back porch up to my eyeballs in an instruction pamphlet that someone in China wrote while on a noodle break, when Ella comes running over.

She sees all the gear spread out and squeals happily,

“Oh my goodness, it came with the sunglasses. And a backpack…and a cheese knife!”.

Can You See Me Now?

My cover’s been blown.

I’ve been an undercover NYC vice agent for a decade, but a month ago it all caught up with me.

A crack addict in central park saw right through me. Came up to me while I was out with my four-year-old daughter and asked point blank “Are you a Federal Agent?”.

I’d been made, game over.

I did my best to rebound, even stammered out, “I’m sorry, what?” but we both knew he had me dead to rights.

I could see the dejection on Ella’s face. No more all night stake outs in her MacClaren stroller. Her days masquerading as a happy little Upper West Side pre-schooler were over.

But this was the life we chose, we knew the risks when I decided to carry a 9mm Glock with a pistol grip and gain 15 lbs binging on Starbucks iced lemon pound cake.

I’ll miss that cake.

Ella will be fine. She’s adaptable. And she knew one day it could all end. And we both knew it could’ve gone real bad, real fast. But it didn’t. We were lucky.

But at some point, lady luck loses your address.

And you wake up one night sweating in the dead of winter. You know you’re living on borrowed time—and you can hear the tick-tock in your head getting louder.

If you’re smart, you get out. Now. Middle of the night. No long goodbyes. So we’ve taken reassignment. But first, they have us on ice for a while. We’re too hot.

They moved us out of the city. To a charming little seaside town where people don’t look too close to see if we’re packing heat when we’re packing groceries.

Ella starts her second year of pre-school next week. Her teacher’s say she’s very verbal, amused by how she refers to a large quantity of anything as a “boat”.

It’s agent slang for a 1000 count quantity of illiegal Ecstasy pills. I just smile and reply, “Yeah, she’s real verbal”.

At dusk I sit on the porch swing, drink light beer from a can and nod pleasantly to the neighbors.

I don’t know if I’ll miss the action. Too soon to tell.

We fell asleep the first night to the sound of crickets. Second night too. Woke up and had our coffee on the beach.

I haven’t startled awake yet to the sound of sirens and reached for my piece.

Ella has a scooter. It’s pink. She pedals up and down our quiet street and hasn’t yet pulled over another kid on his scooter to ask “You in a hurry for some reason I should know about?”.

I gotta go.

Have to rake leaves. That’s what you do here, you rake leaves. I like it. You don’t run them down, slap Flexi-cuffs on them and read them Miranda rights.

They just sit in the grass. You stuff them in a big plastic garbage bag. Put them in the garage, hang up your rake.

Then you go to bed, feel your daughter snuggle up close to you. And you listen to crickets.