Headed toward daycare, pushing the Boo in his stroller. Light changes, and I’m just pushing him over the lip of the curb when zoom: a skateboarder appears out of nowhere, fast, the wrong way up the one-way street. He pulls up as hard as possible, practically falling off his board in the process, and arcs his body six inches over that of my baby son to avoid a collision. Then takes off without a word.

I should explain that this isn’t some dumb 13-year-old with no judgment who will outgrow his cluelessness soon enough. The guy is more like 30, and is fully kitted out for his web-design/graphic-arts/hip-ad-agency job, in a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt and hipster sneakers and a very expensive full-coverage helmet. A guy you can dislike on sight, without guilt.

In my old meek civilian life, I’d have grumbled and moved on. In my newly empowered dad-as-righteous-protector role, however, I shout after him: “THIS IS A ONE-WAY STREET, BUDDY.” He stops, abruptly, and looks at me quizzically. Whereupon the guy next to me (who also almost got clobbered) ambles over to the guy and starts to get into it: “Yeah, you know, this is a one-way street…”  I leave them to it and head off, appreciating that someone has my back, and musing on how little patience I have with skate-punk culture as practiced by grownups.