Hotdogs for Hooligans

A story wherein I admit to being a Karen before it was called Karening, and my lesson in the positive power of doing the Crazy Thing.

When my kids were young, we lived on a one-block street that ran from the high school directly to McDonald’s. Across the street was a small city park. The school had an open campus and two different lunch periods. Twice a day, Monday through Friday, kids in cars would fly down our street to grab their Big Macs and McNuggets, turn around and fly back to the school to beat the class bell. The students who didn’t drive would walk to pick up their food, head back to school, dropping their trash wherever they happened to finish their fries.

My kids knew that between 10:30 and 12:30 they weren’t allowed to go to the park, because it was full of teenagers getting high, fighting, and climbing all over the slides and scaling the frames for the swings. The amount of trash left on the ground *when there were trash cans RIGHT THERE* grew and grew until we neighbors would eventually sigh and head to the park and clean it up.

The most concerning issue was the speeding through a neighborhood where little kids were out playing. We tried calling the police, asking them to be a presence at lunchtimes. No luck. We called the school. Nope. My friend and I even went so far as to sit in lawn chairs in the middle of the street, drinking coffee and chatting, forcing the cars to slow down. For this, the police showed up. After that, we just stood on the sidewalks and yelled, “Slow down!” over and over.

It occurred to me one morning that I was going about this all wrong. I was looking at these kids as a problem to be fixed, as hooligans making our neighborhood unsafe. I tried seeing it differently. How could I appeal to these kids to be more cautious driving, respectful of others’ property, and enjoy their lunch freedom without making the neighborhood miserable?

“Katie, think. You know teenagers. You have a teenager. What appeals to them?”

Food.

That was it. I would appeal to their stomachs. The next day my two year old and I stood on our sidewalk with a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies. He yelled in his adorable little voice to the high school kids at the park, “HEY! You want a cookie?”

At first, they were skeptical. But it was warm cookies, so they dug in and said Thanks and moved on. That day I didn’t say a word to them about my concerns, I just gave them cookies.

The speeding and littering and getting high continued. I decided I could stay angry and resume yelling, or I could up my game.

I decided that once a week I would pull my grill into the driveway at 10 am and start cooking hotdogs. There was a folding table in the garage that became the buns/condiments/napkins station. When the kids started streaming out of the school and heading down our street, my future baseball stadium peanut slinger started yelling, “HEY! You want a hot dog?”

The kids were confused. Was I selling the hot dogs? Could anyone just take one? Or two? Why would I do this? I was honest with them: I was concerned about what happened on our street during lunch hours and I was embarrassed to be that crazy lady shaking my fist and yelling at kids, so I was trying kindness instead.

I didn’t see much change in the first couple weeks, but I kept at it. Every Thursday kids came to my driveway for hot dogs hot off the grill. At school, word began to spread about “the hot dog lady,” and parents began stopping by my house to thank me and offer donations of hot dogs, buns, condiments, and chips.

The High School’s principal sent a couple of kids from Student Leadership to my house with a thank you letter and some school swag. He began having a team of students walk the street with trash bags, cleaning up the park, the gutters, and our lawns and sidewalks.

Having failed with yelling, plotting, threatening, and making angry, demanding phone calls…ultimately it was kindness that worked. The cars that previously flew down our street began to drive the speed limit. Kids were taking care of their own trash. And I got to know some amazing teenagers…

The young woman who went with her friends every day to McDonald’s because she didn’t have much food at home, no money, and sometimes her friends would buy her lunch. I told her to come by after school whenever she wanted, and I would have some food for her take home.

The sweet, gangly young man who thanked me for the offer of a hot dog, but said he was Jewish and didn’t eat pork. I wish you could have seen his face the following Thursday when I had kosher hot dogs ready for him. It was priceless.

The kid who would never look me in the eye, but grabbed a napkin one morning, wrote on it, and left it on the table. It simply said, “Sorry I was an asshole.”

The lesson here for me was immense. Anger and frustration were getting me nowhere, but when I began to look at these teens as kids rather than hooligans, change was possible. People in my life told me I was crazy- neighbors, friends, my (now ex) husband. I didn’t care. I was willing to try the Crazy Thing, I would absolutely do it again.

Listen, if there’s a Crazy Thing on your heart, others may not understand. That’s ok. Do it anyway. You may find that the Crazy Thing is the secret weapon to unleash a kindness that effects change. Do it. I’m on your side.