Yesterday afternoon, after picking Charlotte up from her preschool, I met up with my wife and son who'd been strolling around the Union Square Greenmarket. We decided to pop into the playground on the northeast end of the park, so Charlotte and Oliver could blow off a little steam and run around before dinnertime, it being an absurdly picture-perfect, Indian Summer afternoon. All seemed right with the world.
For all the talk about the gentrification and accompanying sanitization of Manhattan, Union Square does still retain a slight whiff of the unpleasant. Sure, it's nothing compared to needle-friendly hellhole it was in the `70s and `80s, but there's still an element of unease to the place, especially on the east side of it, where nodding junkies still roam and stagger. The playgrounds at the North end of the park are all fenced in, ideally to keep the children in and the rest of the general populace out.
On this day, the playground we chose was buzzing with activity; filled with chirping toddlers and fussing nannies, etc. Just outside the playground was a gaggle of rowdy high school students, throwing poses and shouting lingo around the benches, presumably just sprung from their final class of the day over at the high school on Irving Place. One girl started kicking up a bit of a fuss. Seemingly entangled in a flirtatious game of tag with a gangly classmate in implausibly droopy trousers, she started squealing and then screaming -- literally screaming -- for him to cut it out. Their friends all started to circle around them, egging it on. Her screaming had caught my attention, and the attention of a few other curious parents. All seemed in "good fun" (always a bad sign) until the kid in the droopy pants decided to -- as they're fond of saying nowadays, "take it to another level".
The shouting suddenly escalated, and the group of kids -- boys and girls -- started laughing and cheering as if watching a cock-fight. I looked over, and the entire group had swarmed around the pair. I could see her legs on either side of his waist, helplessly jolting with the frenzied movement of his hips. He had her pinned against the park bench and was mock-humping her as the rest of the group whooped in approval. He finally relented and the circle broke up. She got up, looking deeply disturbed and in tears, immediately running out of the park, while the rest of her classmates continued laughing and high-fiving each other.
And this was all about seven feet away from a playground filled with watching 3 year olds.
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