Well, maybe “hate” is too strong a word. Let’s go for “dislike”; perhaps even “feel contempt for.”

I deal with a mixture of city kids and suburban kids. True, some of the city kids can be a problem. But they don’t hold a candle to the suburban ones. once they learn the rules, most of the city kids I deal with are willing to play within them, and most of the ones who don’t follow the “OK, guv, it’s a fair cop,” school from the english cozies. The kids from the suburbs, however, don’t think they did anything wrong unless they’re caught, and when caught spend the next hours/days/weeks/months whining about how nasty you were to catch them in the first place, and not simply overlook the infraction because they’re such angelic children.

Case in point (names and other identifiers excluded): In chess there are some rules that you either call on yourself, or can only be enforced if your opponent catches you at it and appeals to the director. A suburban child breaks such a rule. After the game is over, I suggest to him, politely, that he should learn the rules of the game if he plans to continue playing in tournaments. (I do this for his own good, because there are some folks who play chess who can get very outraged — and outrageous — if you transgress the rules while playing against them. They probably wouldn’t break your fingers over it; at least they haven’t yet.) Indignantly, he tells me he knows the rules. Further, he obviously didn’t do anything wrong, because his opponent didn’t complain.

OK, I can see trying to get away with breaking the rules, especially if, as in his case, he was going to lose if he didn’t break the rules. I can see trying it, although I can’t condone it (and if one of my players tried it on, he wouldn’t be one of my players for very long). But to stand there and claim there was nothing at all wrong with what he did? You’ll only find that attitude in the suburbs, dear. City kids would at least be embarassed about trying it.

Cities can be rough, I’m not trying to dispute that. But there’s an honesty, a forthrightness, in the roughness that I’ve grown to appreciate. Yes, life in the city can be mean, but the meanness is right out there in the open, not trying to disguise itself.

It’s in the soul-stealing suburbs that your friends get pulled over for DWB. (Driving While Black, for those of you who may be naive about things like that. It a suburban road hazard every black male has to deal with, especially after dark. If you’re behind the wheel of the car, and dark-skinned, you must be Up To No Good.) Where the kids can, with deliberate intent, break the rules and then be amazed that a simple “Sorry” doesn’t wipe the offense out completely. Where actions and words are not allowed to have consequences. Where we just can’t admit anything happens, where we hide all transgressions under a flood of money. Oh, some misdeeds surface despite all the efforts to hide them, but they’re just the visible tip of the iceberg. I’ve lived in small towns, large cities, and suburbs. I’ve faced power-take-off shafts and guns. I’ve no intention of ever living in a suburb again. Those people are scary.

I’ll leave you with the thoughts of the Great Detective Himself:

“You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there… They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin…”

“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, …. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger.”