December 23, 2003 - Honey, have you seen the kids?

Yesterday the dedicated staff of edhat.com went out looking for children ... happy children riding bikes and playing kick ball in the streets just like we did when we were young. The weather was nice.  School was out for Christmas … umm … Winter Break.  And there had just been a large earthquake.  What better reason to be outside!

We drove our green car around neighborhoods with wide streets and clear sidewalks that were near elementary schools … Foothill, Kellogg, Hollister, and Harding.  We drove slow because the signs said so, but in reality there were no children to endanger … not much of anything else except for a couple of gardeners, some people walking to their cars, and a mailman. The lack of human activity was borderline spooky … like something out of an old B movie.

In all we drove up and down 96 city blocks.  In all we saw 16 children:

• University & Ribera- 4 kids hanging out and talking … 3 had bikes
• Grove & Calle Cita - 1 boy walking down Grove
• Grove & San Remo - 2 teenage girls walking with backpacks
• Lincolnwood – 3 kids and their mom playing basketball
• Chino & Valerio – 3 kids on bikes riding fast
• Chino & Micheltorena – 2 kids on the sidewalk: 1 on a bike and 1 on a scooter
• Modoc & Mission – 1 girl walking her bike

And that was it! No kickball games in cul-de-sacs, no chalk painting on sidewalks, no jump ropes, or hoola-hoops. There were over 10,000 elementary school kids not in class on Monday, and in over an hour of driving we only saw 16 of them. Where were they?

16 kids in 96 blocks yield a ratio of 0.17 kids/block. The subscriber closest to this number in our daily contest was Seminomadic who guessed 0.10 and is now the proud owner of two movie passes.  Movies? Maybe that is where the kids are!

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CORRECTION TO YESTERDAY’S TIDBIT:
Tommy Noodleman is right and we are wrong. Alexander Hamilton, pictured on the $10 bill, was not a president.