Those Wacky Non-Mormons, OR, A Fixie of Hipsters

Early this morning, a pack of clean-cut kids swarmed through our neighborhood and put up big American flags in front of every house on the street. I guess it's a Labor Day thing? I've got no problem with the flag but you don't need a PhD in U.S. history to know that the relationship between the U.S. flag and the international labor movement has had its ups and downs.

What's the collective noun for these roving bands of clean-cut youngsters, anyway? An emigration of Mormons? Whatever you call them, they're a regular feature of our new neighborhood. It actually reminds me of my childhood a little: kids playing up and down the street from dawn to dusk, knocking on the door after dinner to ask if the Ukelele can come out to play. We have lots of kids in our neighborhood at home, but you book your playdates three weeks in advance, and nobody goes nowhere without a car seat, helmet, and three chaperones. Don't these Utah kids know the wild spaces of childhood have been paved over, we're all paranoid helicopter parents now? Maybe they don't read the New York Review of Books. Or maybe it's just that they have such a surplus here, it's not so crucial to look after them.

( More Hilarious Observational Comedy, Utah Style )