Two kids are testifying about why this Arlington shelter is a bad idea — cursing, 2nd hand smoke. Their parents should be horse whipped. READ MORE

1) A thick-chested man in tight striped Polo shirt and a woman in tennis whites are walking towards the pool. “They say that money can’t buy happiness,” the man says. “Well, I say, ‘I’m gonna try to find out!’” The woman swats at his arm. The man laughs, “HA HA HA HA HA.” READ MORE

Saturday morning, after picking up my kid from his art class, I was walking with him on East 11th Street, across from St. Mark's Church, when we came upon a boy, looked to be about ten years old, lying on the sidewalk. His eyes were closed, and though I could see him breathing, for a moment, I wondered whether something bad had happened—whether I would have to call 911, and whether my own kid was about to witness something much heavier than I would ever want for him to witness. Three guys walking in front of us had fanned out to step around around him, slowing to inspect the scene. As my kid, who is six, and I did the same, I scanned the street for clues as to what was going on. Twenty feet away, standing in a doorway to a building, I saw two man standing and talking and looking toward the prone boy. "I don't know, it's like some kind of performance art or something," one of them said, and they both chuckled and shook their heads in a way that told me that the speaker was the dad. READ MORE

What's that? A fundraiser to help expand a program in which New York City school kids build gardens, grow vegetables and make documentaries? Sounds like community organizing to me.

"My name is Frank and I'm five years old. My dad and I are traveling on a ship to Denmark. If you find this letter, please write back to me, and I will write back to you." READ MORE

3 year old learning to shoot.

Small child shoots AK-47

"Children still enjoy playing traditional games like skipping and clapping in the playground despite the lure of mobile phones, computer games, and television, a study published on Tuesday found. Playground games are 'alive and well ... they happily co-exist with media-based play, the two informing each other,' it said." READ MORE

Teenagers aren’t having much sex these days. And why should they? If it’s not the AIDS resurgence or public displays of adolescent pregnancy, it’s HPV, or syphilis (yes, syphilis) or any other number of other pestilences that rot your organs and turn your genitals to corrugated mush. READ MORE

Awl contributor and author of The Metropolis Case (Crown, 2010), Matthew Gallaway certainly pulls no punches in reassessing What Shall Be I Be When I Grow Up?..., a book he wrote in 1979, when he was 11 years old, and recently republished in its entirety, on the Internet. "Initially heralded as a 'model of gender equality and optimism,'" Gallaway writes today, "the book was later dismissed as 'derivative, unoriginal, and convoluted' and subsequently banned in most schools when an investigative reporter uncovered evidence of subliminal messaging through the use of product placement—a practice then in its infancy—and politically subversive content." Having read the book myself, I think such criticism is too harsh. In focussing his review solely on the most controversial aspects of the work, Gallaway is too quick to dismiss the courage his younger self displayed in challenging conventional wisdom (a six-legged octopus!) and wrestling with what is perhaps the single most profound question inherent to the human condition. What Shall I Be When I Grow Up? Indeed, what shall any of us?

When I was a kid, like eleven, I used to get those tubes of lip balm that smelled so strongly of lime or strawberry or pina colada and keep them in my desk in my room and basically huff them when I was supposed to be doing my homework. God, they smelled so good! READ MORE