As a faculty member at a small university, I always enjoyed the last item on our faculty meeting agendas. The meeting would close with an invitation to offer announcements to the faculty community “for the good of the order.” They reminded us that despite our differences of opinion, we all had the same goal: educating our students. It is in that same spirit that I relate the following:
Recently, as I walked through Grant Park, I saw a youth about thirteen or fourteen years old riding his skateboard inside the fenced-off tennis courts. A sign outside the door leading onto the courts states “No Skateboarding” among other prohibited activities. I sighed. Should I say something to this young man? I looked up to see a woman with her tennis racket slung over her shoulder standing outside the gate at the other end of the court. She was watching the young man warily. I had already passed the gate nearest me, but when I saw the woman, I turned around and went inside the court. I kept my distance from the skateboarder, and raising my voice I called:
“Excuse me! There is no skateboarding on the tennis courts!” There was no response from the young man. He kept skateboarding; his longish blond hair partially covered his face. I called to him again: “The sign says ‘No Skateboarding.’ It ruins the surface of the courts,” I offered. This time he replied, saying calmly,
“I’m not going to be here very long. I’m just waiting for my friends.”
“How long you’re going to be here isn’t the point,” I responded. “The problem is that skateboarding on the court surface ruins it.” The young man kept skateboarding. Then I heard a voice behind me,
“Get off the **** court!” I turned around to see a man about six feet tall, probably in his mid-thirties, about half my age. “Get off the court!” he yelled again, walking up to stand beside me inside the court. “Look,” he continued, “I was a skateboarder, too. It’s cool, but when you skate in places you aren’t supposed to, it gives skateboarding a bad rap. Now, get off the court!” The young man finally stopped skating, flipped his skateboard up, and walked past us off the court, but not without saying, “I’ll just come back here tomorrow.”
I thanked the man for his support, and we went our separate ways. When I told my husband about the incident, he remarked he wasn’t surprised the skateboarder had paid no attention to the sign prohibiting skateboarding on the tennis courts. “Why would we expect a teenager to read and follow the directions given on a sign, when he sees adults ignoring signs every day? Every day I see people ignoring signs. They speed through the neighborhood streets; they don’t come to a full stop at a stop sign. There are plenty of other examples. Children and teenagers witness their parents and other adults ignoring posted signs every day.”
I had to admit he was right. The speeding has gotten so bad on our street, a designated greenway, that we recently received a notice stating that following a monitored speed check, the city determined it would install speed bumps on our street. That’s a lot of tax dollars to spend just to get people to slow down and do what they should be doing if they would only read the signs and follow the directions. It benefits all of us, not just economically, but communally, to do what is best — for the good of the order.
Pamela Plimpton, a B-W resident since 1980, retired as a professor of English in 2020. Her interests include reading, writing, gardening, and singing in a community chorale. She and her husband enjoy playing golf, traveling, and grandparenting their granddaughter.