living for the city

I often drive a route the takes me through a quiet street in the heart of an affluent neighborhood that flanks our less affluent neighborhood.
The street that divides the two neighborhoods, is named Division, ironically.

On one block of this street there are always several of those green plastic turtle figures that say

"SLOW DOWN!"

Several in a one block span, which I didn't think too much of, until today, when I came to a complete stop in the middle of the block, because there was a woman sort of halfway in the street.

I noticed her small child was on the other side, not on the sidewalk, but on the street, so I assumed they were crossing the street.

I did find it strange that a mother would cross the street and leave her child on the other side.  So I sat there waiting for the kid to cross over to the mom, or the mom to cross over to the kid, but nothing happened.
She did glare at me.

Then it dawned on me that the woman was not crossing the street, but rather, had been playing IN the street, until I came along and interrupted all the fun, by driving down it.

A few seconds after my revelation she gesticulated wildly and screamed SLOW DOWN!, twisting her mouth in a freakish, exagerated manner that made her look like a total kook.

She looked like a privleged, slef righteous, kook that thinks she can use the street as a kind of extension of her front yard.  Like it's perfectly normal to teach your child to play in the middle of the street, as long as you line the street with large plastic turtles and yell at anyone that choses to use the street for it's intended purpose.

The mouth twisting and shouting totally pissed me off, since I happed to be stopped at the time.
 So I did what any rational person would do and stuck my toungue out at her and drove on (after making sure the child was out of the way).