What To Do If Your Neighborhood Is Starting To Resemble A Nearly-Abandoned Exurb Ripe For The Picking By Scrap-Hungry Tweakers

So one Sunday a few weeks back I walked outside to get the paper and noticed that one of the new hyacinths we had just planted was trampled. Of course I immediately jumped to conclusions and figured a neighborhood kid stomped on it while retrieving a ball or otherwise doing whatever it is neighborhood kids "do."

And then I noticed the paint chips.

Well, now that's odd, I thought. Where could the paint chips be coming from? So I turned around toward the house itself and saw it: Somebody stole our downspout.

Hey, wait a sec, you might say, What's a downspout? You know what they are — those pipe thingys that take rainwater from the gutter down to wherever rainwater disappears to (I think the sewer in our case, though I'm not totally sure).

And then once you figure out what a downspout is, the obvious followup is something along the lines of, What would anyone want to steal a downspout for? Good question. Though it seems hardly lucrative, apparently people steal them for scrap.

I guess the other thing is that downspouts are relatively easy to steal — after all, it's not like stealing an oil furnace or a chimney — you just rip the thing off the side of the house.

So I did what any good citizen would do: I called the cops. I reasoned that if this was part of a rash of stolen downspouts, the community needs to know about it. And if our neighborhood resembled a tweaker's savings account, then the community would need to come to terms with it: Hide your scrap metal!

So here's how it went down:

• 9:26: Called precinct, couldn't figure out who to call so I push "0"
• 9:28: Message cycles back to original recorded message; I try "1" instead
• 9:29: Message cycles back to original recorded message; I hang up
• 9:31: Call 311
• 9:32: 311 transfers me to a 911 operator, which is exactly what I don't want to do since this is clearly not an emergency
• 9:35: 911 sends a message saying something along the lines of an officer is assigned to the case and since they're extremely busy, there may be a delay responding to my call
• 9:51: Cops arrive
• 10:10: We finish marveling at the strange event with the neighbors and return inside

Which is to say, I guess with all the bad press about the NYPD sweeping crime under the rug or whatnot, I sort of expected some kind of "911 Is A Joke" response, but that totally didn't happen.

What did happen is that a squad car showed up within 15 minutes and two pleasant officers took the complaint. After I looked at the Incident Information Slip and realized there was no complaint number — actually, I seemed to remember the officer circling the blank spot and telling me I needed to call to get it later. I wondered if they would just fill out this slip and let the crime go unreported, so I called today. And . . . there's actually a complaint number. Not sure what this means, but I suppose it means that the crime has become part of the statistics for the neighborhood.

Another goal of mine was to make it into the police blotter of one of the local weeklies. As far as I know, this did not happen.

When the cops showed up, several of the neighbors came out to see what was going on. Everyone was surprised that a downspout was allegedly stolen, including the cops, who sort of seemed like they wanted to make sure this was an actual theft before making a report.

Part of me wanted the entire street to have their downspouts stolen. There's something about the idea of a shared experience that somehow lessens the sting. It's stupid of course.

About a week later I was walking to the bagel store on a weekend morning and saw a downspout ignominiously discarded on the side of the road about a block from the house. It had been folded in at least three directions. This made me wonder whether we were victims of weekend vandals, which is obviously not nearly as exciting as scrap metal thieves.

A few weeks after that we saw this flier on the door, which solved an immediate problem — how to replace the missing downspout — but which also seemed a little too . . . perfect — timingwise, at least:

Now I'm not for a second intimating that this company made our downspout disappear. Not at all. What I will say is that there's not a chance in hell that I'd ever contact this company. Not because I think they did it — not at all! — but because if they did it, there was no way I'd want to use them. I remember reading about this a while back with some car windows on Staten Island, so it was just this company's dumb luck that they handed out a flier to us so soon after the incident.

Then, as Goober pointed out, there was the issue of the wording of the note.

One thing I think companies should never do is focus on the negative. The first thing they say is they're a "complaint free business, without paying anyone off." Dude, that's your open? You have to do a little better than that. Same paragraph: "We are not trying to say we are perfect, but we sure try to be." I appreciate the candor, but as a prospective customer, I'd like to think that you're imperfect with others and not me. Just a little psychology or whatnot.

Paragraph three: They've never gone bankrupt. To paraphrase Chris Rock, You're not supposed to go bankrupt!

Paragraph four: "What we are is real," like this is the Penthouse Letters of gutter repair.

I don't know, they seem like they're trying a little too hard. We're still trying to figure out who to call to fix the thing. I'll let you know if we come across anyone good.

The Days Of Firsts

For the new parent, life is filled with various "firsts." There is the first smile, the first walk around the block, the first pamper blowout. The firsts are endless.

It's sort of like how annoying people in love can sometimes be — first dates, first kisses, flora flattened in reference books . . . the whole thing. Except with a kid, the mundane is pushed to the forefront like you wouldn't believe. I've already talked about first movies, first bottle returns and first opportunities to flee (not taken). Well, we added several more firsts this past week.

One big one: First plane trip. We were very excited about this and of course somewhat nervous. What if the plane tumbled out of the sky? This of course meant that we were experiencing another new first: First completely irrational fear of all-out tragedy; I think the only way to get over this one is to get the fuck out of your house — and your head. Easier said than done, but the more "risks" you take, the easier it is to gloss over the idea that anything is particularly risky. In this way, I'm looking forward to our first bungee jump, single-engine airplane ride and K2 ascent.

The only tricky thing about plane rides is to make sure a baby is feeding at takeoff and landing. It's just like when you chew gum: the jaw movement of nursing pops a child's ears. Taking off from JFK can be problematic when a plane is number 48 for takeoff or some such thing, which makes it tough to figure out when to start nursing. Fortunately we timed it right and Animal didn't seem to mind that he was hurtling through the air seven miles above the earth at 500 miles per hour.

Another thing: Changing an infant in an airplane bathroom is actually not as difficult as you might believe. Well, maybe you're a pro and you can fix an all-out blowout in a Greyhound bus without having to use a drop of Purell; I'm not that person. Yet. But I never realized there are changing tables above those dinky airplane vacuum toilets. I think we did OK; I still don't see any signs of E. coli or hepatitis, so I'm assuming "mission accomplished."

The only time anything was amiss was when Animal was shocked out of sleep by the cabin lights and PA after the plane came to a complete stop and began wailing. Still, we were proud when Jen heard someone a few rows back exclaim that he/she didn't even realize there was a baby sitting there.

While away, we had our first real sitdown meal; it went fine. We had our first taxi ride; no problem; I even took a picture of the driver's badge and medallion number so we could remember him.

And we had our first baseball game. That was pretty special to me and only gets more special the more I think about it. Not to get all Kevin Costner on you, but there's something about this. Yes, he was asleep for long stretches of the action and no, I don't think three-month-olds can fully comprehend the concept of a sacrifice fly, but it felt good to expose him to . . . a meaningless early season game? No, in my mind I'll keep it Kevin Costner. All of us sang "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" to him during the seventh inning stretch. Pretty big stuff, in my mind.

Did Uncle Goober make a "My First Game" sign? Did I hold that sign over our heads during every half inning? Was I jazzed to see us on the Jumbotron? Is Mom checking with the front office to see if they have a picture of the Jumbotron? Did I record the game to see if Fox showed us? Did I watch the entire game on double speed?

Suffice it to say, the answer to all of these questions is "yes." And yet, the coolest thing for me was holding Animal on my lap thinking that one day Jen would teach him to keep score, one day he'd see something extraordinary, one night he'd root for the other team to win just to get home, some day he might root for the Mets to spite us, maybe some day he'd go fetch beer for the two of us . . . stuff like that.

And we stayed for the whole game. It was a short game, mind you, and like I said, he was asleep for long stretches of time, but the feeling — to paraphrase Mark Grace — was pretty big league.

One thing we learned — and if you have an infant and are planning to travel, or have yet to have an infant and might still like to travel if you have one, this might be useful: An infant's internal clock doesn't really change like an adult's does. So that if you're traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast and your child normally starts to wind down at, say, 8 p.m., you can expect him or her to start to wind down around 5 p.m. or so. It's not scientific, but in the future we know not to plan to be out anytime past 5 or perhaps 6. (And if you don't have children, or haven't had them in quite some time and forgot, this is why you shouldn't feel dissed if you visit someone in the evening and their child who you haven't yet met is nowhere to be seen.)

Of course, the main reason we went out west was to see my grandmother, who at 94 going on 95 in a little over a week, has waited a long time to see this moment, her first great-grandchild.

Now intellectually you know that when it comes to raising a child, the goal is to nurture a decent, moral, thoughtful, independent member of society. But once you tell your parents that either you or your partner are pregnant a secondary reason quickly emerges. It's not that it's not about you — because it never was — but it's more that you are part of an unbroken line that continues on after even you shuffle off this blah-blah-blah.

A long time ago when we were teenagers we assumed that having children was some kind of "selfish" act. Maybe you still see it that way. If so, try to keep believing that when you deliver your newborn to your grandmother. It doesn't feel so selfish then.

And that's not to mention what it does to your parents. I don't know if I've ever seen parents as purely joyful as when they find out they're becoming grandparents (except on 16 and Pregnant, that is). I believe the technical term is "apeshit." When Jen was pregnant I asked one of my parents' friends if he cared at all about his daughter now that he has grandchildren. "Of course not!" he laughed. I asked my parents if they felt similarly and they sort of shuffled their feet around and assured me that no, of course that wasn't the case. They wouldn't dare admit it, but of course they're lying. And that's OK. I don't mind that they're lying. That's part of the deal, and it's not even a bad one.

Into The Thicket Of Dreary Oranges

Back in February I mentioned the "fourth trimester" in the context of appreciating the grace period nature allows parents to get their shit together before the clock starts ticking. In short, in general, for the first three months babies' brains are sufficiently undeveloped to the point that you probably won't screw up anything too badly.

I don't believe in "intelligent design," and I don't even think I understand what that term means, but I love how brilliant anthropology is. Or at least how brilliant human physiology is, in the sense that it's great that human pelvises are small and that babies are born with underdeveloped brains which ends up giving us this grace period to figure out what is going on.

Sometimes when I talked about this idea it was in the context of conveying a faux modesty about how we weren't really doing anything that impressive by keeping Animal fed and diapered. The idea being, under three months no real parenting is happening — none of the heavy lifting like you see in tender moments in the final minutes of a sitcom, for example, or maybe The Road or whatever.

So anyway, for a while we had that to fall back on. And then the other day Animal reached the end of his "fourth trimester" when he turned three months. And now I'm scared.

What has changed? I was looking at pictures we've taken during the past three months, and he's definitely cuter. He smiles all the time now, and not just after urinating in his diaper. He responds very favorably when we say the word, "noodlehead," almost laughing.

Just the other day we had an unconfirmed report from Animal's grandparents that he grabbed his foot. I've never seen him do this. When we give him "tummy time" — that sadistic rite of passage in which babies are plopped down on their bellies and forced to lift their heads — he turns about 40 percent of the way onto his back. I am convinced he is mimicking me when I point with my index finger. I spend an inordinate amount of time point-point-pointing at Animal. Lately he has started to grab my finger. This will do.

Anyway, there are all manner of milestones that we think we've seen Animal reach, all of which are completely boring to anyone outside of about six relatives of ours. Well, except for one thing — those weird spit bubbles are apparently a developmental milestone, too. That was funny to us.

Speaking of saliva, Jen mentioned the other day that if she had one word to describe her life now, it would be "damp," what with all the spit, drool, pee and whatever else. The drool is really something. I mentioned "tummy time" before — and I know it's important for his head strength and whatever else — but what he's really good at during tummy time seems to be drooling. So much so that one of his latest nicknames is "Loord Drool."

Three months . . . wow! "Wow" happens to be one of the words I'm "teaching" Animal — for two reasons: One, it's fun, and two, I have this idea that he's watching my lips and learning how to speak, so it's good to have a variety of words/mouth movements. The latest project involves getting a jump on words that tend to be difficult to pronounce, so I spend time on tricky phrases. "A thicket of dreary oranges," for example, and old standbys like "perilously placed nuclearized wasps' nests."

Today Jen forwarded me this Charlie Brooker Guardian piece about him witnessing his wife's C-section. She thought it was nice. The other day I mentioned that our friend Emily said that it's a thing when you finally meet a baby smaller and younger than your own, this march of time that sneaks up on you. I haven't seen a younger baby than Animal, but I suppose this might count? He is three months you know.

Oh, and yes, we're keeping him. The hospital did have a great 90-day return policy, but now that that's passed, he is ours to keep.