In Amsterdam, little kids parade from school to park . . .
“. . . Everyone get a partner . . . Each of you grab the string . . . Here we go . . .”
Big kids pedal to school alone by eleven, go with mom and dad through downtown as young as six.
Parents still get to school to pick up the young ones, chatting as they stand over their bikes until the progeny come outside.
That parade of cute? Those rites of passage woven into the commute? The way parents talk to one another as they wait?
It’s not bad. The locals might say it “Very O.K.”
Now I live with a view of small mountains. While paltry by Colorado standards, these New England peaks are Himalayan compared to anything in the Netherlands.
From my place I amble into town either by snaking behind college buildings and the alley like pathways they form, or just by walking along the main street.
It is a mistake to go either way at 3:00, as I did yesterday. That’s when the cars line up and idle as parents wait to pick up their kids from the grade school that sits between me and town.
The snake down route takes you through the thick of it, but main street backs up as a result of school getting out too.
In a town of two intersections, you get big city gridlock and the bad noise and bad air that come with it.
And, I guess, America would say this is O.K.