An Act of Larceny

Redwood Grove is a lovely Los Altos park near our home.  As its name suggests, there are many redwood trees in the park.  There is also an archery range. 

The Los Altos Recreation Department, whose acronym, LARD (I am not making this up) is emblazoned on all their equipment, offers youth archery classes at Redwood Grove.

I know about the archery classes because my survivalist daughter, Amy, convinced me to sign her up for them when she was a ten-year-old.  The other kids who showed up were all a little peculiar.  I remember one odd little girl who always came in a tutu and a boy whose hat was so large it shaded his feet.

When it is my turn to drag the dog around the neighborhood, I often choose Redwood Grove.  When out walking, I always try to catch the eye of passers-by and smile, because although I am not a born and bred Californian, I have become a proud naturalized citizen of this friendly state.

The other day as I was walking down into Redwood Grove I passed a sulky adolescent boy who was carrying a LARD archery bow.

I tried to catch his eye and smile, but he was having none of it and scurried past me out of the park.

Just as I was thinking to myself, “Since when does LARD loan out archery equipment?”, I came upon a storage shed with a LARD employee inside of it and a wheelbarrow full of archery equipment outside of it.

It still took me a minute to realize that the young man had stolen the bow.

I am ashamed to say that my first thought was “Oh, wow, that’s a lot of chutzpah for a twelve-year-old, maybe there is hope for our youth after all.”

And then I was like, but wait, I’m a Los Altos taxpayer so that kid basically just stole from me.

But I still think it’s pretty cool that he had the cojones to pluck that bow from the wheelbarrow.