>>>Dragan,
>>>
>>>Sorry for your loss. But I am wondering, would you write the same message if the two kids were white? Would you stop giving to white charities if the kids were white? You see what I am saying?
>>
>>It's that I feel betrayed, I guess. We wanted to be part of the neighborhood, not just a family of foreigners, and this is putting a barricade between us in a way. This is probably my bubble bursting.
>
>Dragan - I thought better of you. That a couple of kids misbehaved is no reason for you to turn against _all_ your neighbors.

They all seem to know each other. I've had things stolen from my yard back home, before we had the fence. As long as it was wide open it was fair game - and I knew whose kids did what. Because other neighbors would tell me. And most of my neighbors were Gypsies there (just so you don't think that we're in any way picky or prejudiced). And one bike that was stolen was eventually returned. But those were the bad times, Miloševic etc; the kid who stole it was an orphan, sort of (one parent vanished, other in prison) and had deep emotional problems, that one kid in the whole street, where several families were refugees... but this is the US, where all the money of the world comes to swim. The kids, what I could see, didn't sneak or anything, they came boldly to the fence - I was eating and they were right in my line of sight, then stepped aside - I thought they may be doing what they really were doing, but I thought they were gone. Well, the bikes were.

And there's almost always somebody there in that back alley. And about a hundred windows are facing it across the playground. Somebody saw, but nobody cared. Well, I don't care either.