It’s lunchtime as I type this. It was supposed to be rainy/snowy today, but the sun is shining. The kids did their schoolwork this morning, and they’re going to go outside to play as soon as they’re done eating.

It terrifies me.

Yesterday, a neighbour in our sweet small town called the police on my kids.

It was just another day in this shitty new pandemic life we’re all living. The kids did their schoolwork in the morning. They ate lunch, and then they went outside to play, as they do just about every afternoon now.

We live on a street with (mostly) very small, shared yards. Our backyard playground is mere feet away from our neighbour’s backyard playground because, as I said, these yards are SMALL AND SHARED.

When our kids are playing outside, the kids next-door are often playing outside, too. It’s the only kids they see, so sure, they talk and joke and attempt to “play” together — all from a distance.

Sometimes they play Charades — no need to be close for that — and last week or the week before (it’s all a blur), I showed them how to run an obstacle course and time each other. No problems there. One person at a time on the obstacle course, and everyone else cheered from a distance.

They’re kids, all between the ages of seven and nine. They’re not perfect, and sometimes they veer closer than six feet. One of them will remember and yell “Social distance!” and they back up, or we remind them from the windows.

The phone rang yesterday afternoon. It was our local police department, calling to tell me that a neighbour “who wished to remain anonymous” had reported that we had a “crowd of kids” running around together, even running in and out of each other’s houses.

I almost dropped the phone, I was so shocked.