I called ZipCar immediately on my cell phone. The rep with whom I spoke first verified that everyone was OK and then went through the “customer was in an accident” script quickly, efficiently, and politely. I received email within minutes of our phone call telling me everything I needed to know and do. It was all quite reasonable.

The next day I received a phone call and followup email message from Gordon, the guy at ZipCar who would be handling the incident. Gordon reminded me on the phone that because I hadn’t paid for ZipCar’s collision damage waiver, I was liable for up to $500 of the cost of repairing the damage. This was not a surprise to me. I was pretty pissed at the hit-and-run driver for sticking me with a $500 repair bill, but that was the driver’s fault, not ZipCar’s. I was resigned to pay the $500 when I read this in the followup email from Gordon:

If you have a credit card with rental collision coverage, now is a good time to start up a claim with them.

I pulled my credit card out of my wallet, observed the word “platinum” on the front which had never mattered before but might now suddenly be important, and gave them a call. Lo and behold, I do in fact have rental collision coverage, and with one more phone call, I was able to open a claim with MasterCard to be reimbursed for the $500.

The claim administrators at MasterCard demanded a whole slew of paperwork to process the claim, much of which had to come from ZipCar. I sent the list of documents to ZipCar later that day, July 13.

Two days later, only three days after the incident, the car was fully repaired and back in service, and Gordon had sent all the necessary paperwork to MasterCard.

Having somebody hit your rental car in a parking lot couldn’t possibly be described as a positive experience, but the folks at ZipCar managed to make it as painless as it could possibly have been. Yet another in a long series of positive ZipCar experiences. This company gets it.

(ZipCars are available in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, London, the NY/NJ Metro Area, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington DC, and more than 100 university campuses across North America. If I’ve convinced you that ZipCar is for you, click the ad in the sidebar of my blog, and you and I will both get some free driving out of the deal!)

Good citizenship taught

The school my wife and I chose for our children stands out dramatically because the students, faculty and parents are nice to each other and happy to be there. This does not happen by chance; it is the result of a consciously designed, constantly maintained culture which emphasizes respect and empathy as the community’s most precious values.

That culture could not possibly be achieved through punishment and discipline. Rather, good citizenship is an essential component of the curriculum, in every class and every grade.

And therein lies the solution to bullying. Schools cannot merely teach our children not to be bad; we must teach them to be good.

Jonathan Kamens, Brighton

Here’s what I originally sent them:

Standing up to bullies is not enough

The terrible tragedy of Phoebe Prince’s suicide, following months of relentless bullying by other students, has triggered yet another wave of calls for schools to enforce strict anti-bullying policies. Such policies are important, but if they were enough, then the bullying problem would have been eliminated long ago. Bullying is the symptom, not the disease, and the time for stronger medicine is long overdue.

When bullying is pushed into the spotlight, it is always because of a tragedy. The rarity of these leads us to believe that the bullying which caused them is also rare, a belief to which we cling because it absolves us of communal responsibility. But in fact, bullying and meanness have become the norm: a 2001 study estimated that 30% of students in the U.S. were involved in bullying.

The academic subjects taught in school are intended to give our children the skills and knowledge they need to grow into happy, successful adults. Respectful, polite, and thoughtful behavior, which in our parents’ day was referred to as “good citizenship,” is just as critical as reading, writing or arithmetic, and it, too, needs to be taught continuously.

The school my wife and I chose for our children stands out dramatically from the others because the students, faculty, and even the other parents are nice to each other and happy to be there. This does not happen by chance. Rather, it is the result of a consciously designed, constantly maintained culture which emphasizes respect and empathy as the community’s most precious values.

That culture could not possibly be achieved through punishment and discipline. Rather, good citizenship is an essential component of the curriculum, in every class and every grade.

And therein lies the solution to the bullying problem. Our schools cannot merely teach our children not to be bad; we must teach them to be good.

My children attend JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School.  Students at all academic levels are admitted to the school.  JCDS is less concerned about intellect than about whether the student, and his or her parents, are compatible with the school’s culture.

In the 6½ years I’ve had children at JCDS, only a few families have chosen to leave.  Some of those departures were due to academic needs the school could not fulfill, but others were because their kids simply didn’t fit in.

I’m sure many of you just cringed.  We all know what “didn’t fit in” means, right?  Kids that are brainy, nerdy, funny-looking, or too fat.  Kids who do their homework and care about getting good grades.  Kids who would rather play D&D than football.  Right?

Nope.  At JCDS, fitting in isn’t about any of those things.  Rather, it’s almost entirely about one thing and one thing only: treating others with respect.  Kids with an “attitude” just don’t fit in at JCDS.  What’s most interesting is that usually, their parents don’t either.

For example, one girl who entered the school in first grade left with her family two years later.  During those years, my wife and I saw and heard of countless incidents in which this girl was mean to other kids.  We weren’t surprised by her behavior, because, frankly, she was just like her mother.  Is it any surprise that a woman who adorned her car with a “mean girl” bumper sticker, who seemed to take pride in being pushy, demanding, and self-centered, would have a daughter who had trouble treating her peers with respect?

Bullies are made, not born.  Not every bully has mean parents, but the odds are that when you look at the adults in a bully’s life, you will find people who at best failed to actively model and teach respect, and at worst did the opposite.

Parents are the biggest influence in their children’s lives, but the second biggest influence is, of course, school.  Our schools share responsibility for teaching and modeling respect.  They are, by and large, falling short.

Having a “zero tolerance” policy about bullying isn’t good enough.  Teaching kids why bullying is bad isn’t good enough.  Even empowering kids to step in when they see someone else being bullied isn’t good enough.  People always fall short of the ideal, so if the ideal you’re teaching is “don’t bully,” then guess what — the bullying isn’t going to stop.

Stop teaching students what not to do, and start teaching them what they should do.  Teach them to be nice to their peers.  Teach them to be respectful to their peers.  Teach them that meanness and disrespect, even when they fall short of what one might consider “bullying,” will simply not be tolerated.  And then don’t tolerate it.

A major part of the JCDS curriculum, in every class in every grade, is middot v’derekh eretz.  There is no good translation for these terms, but a loose translation is “character traits and civil, polite, and thoughtful behavior.”  JCDS doesn’t merely teach its students not to be bad.  It teaches them to be good. The results are obvious: the two things remarked upon most often by visitors to the school are that the students are nice and happy.

I challenge the principal of any school with a bullying problem to visit JCDS and learn from their approach.

“Comeaux, 49, took the officers’ weapons and handcuffed them together in the back of the vehicle…”

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It’s quite convenient that they label their vehicles “mayor’s office” so it’s easy to see when our mayor’s staff is giving us peons the finger, eh?

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That’s Massachusetts “official vehicle” license plate number MB2839.

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And this one is license plate number MB2677.

Forty minutes later, just when we’d both drifted off to sleep, it rang again and jolted us both awake.  This time, the party at the other end of the line was “kind” enough to actually speak:

Him: “Is Matt there?”

Me: (groggily) “Um, there’s no Matt here.  What number are you trying to call?”

Him: [Reads off a number different from mine by one digit.]

Me: “That’s not the number you called.  I don’t know if you’re the same person who called me twice forty minutes ago, but if so, then this is the third time you’ve called the wrong number, and it’s the middle of the night, so please get a clue and stop it.” [click]

It’s hard enough for my wife and I to get a decent amount of sleep with five kids and me gallivanting off on silly windmill-tilting exercises on a regular basis.  We really could do without rude idiots waking us up in the middle of the night. *sigh*

My route home from work takes me past the Boston Public Garden:

Because Boylston and Arlington are both one-way the wrong way, I have to make a loop around the Public Garden by taking Charles to Beacon to Arlington.

Or, at least, I would have to do that if I weren’t doing this instead:

That is, I was cutting through the Public Garden.  That would be fine if it weren’t for the “no bicycles” sign posted at the Garden’s entrance.

I rationalized what I was doing: “I ride slowly and carefully… I always yield right-of-way to pedestrians… I’m not hurting anybody.”  Given how much I hate it when other people pull shtik like that, I was being a grade-A hypocrite.

Well, today my hypocrisy came home to roost.  As I was slowly and carefully riding through the Garden, a crotchety old guy stepped in front of my bicycle, forced me to stop, and then proceeded to chew me out, with a lecture that began with, “Can’t you read!?”

I argued with him, because accepting criticism from strangers is not one of my (nor, I would imagine, most people’s) strengths.

But he was right, of course.

Although I can’t thank the crotchety old guy, I can say there that I’m grateful to him for reminding me to live up to my own standards.  Thanks to him, starting tomorrow, I’ll be “taking the long way home.”

The three weeks leading up to the Jewish fast day on the Ninth of Av, and especially in the eight days preceding the fast, are supposed to be used, among other things, as a period of introspection, self-examination, and conscious effort to improve one’s middot, i.e., one’s behavior toward one’s fellow man and toward society.  Whether I ride through or around the Garden may seem trivial, but in fact, no aspect of one’s conduct in this world is truly trivial, and I’m grateful for the reminder.

To the editor:

It has been painful to watch the avalanche of flawed statistics and discredited urban legends wielded by opponents of a primary enforcement seat-belt law in their foolhardy efforts to stop a law which would undeniably save lives.

Jonah Goldberg informs us that since there are states with higher traffic fatality rates that have primary enforcement laws, such laws must be useless.  His simplistic analysis ignores the prime directive of statistical research, i.e., that statistical variations between two samples are only relevant if all other factors have been taken into account.  Study after study that did take such factors into account have proved that primary enforcement dramatically increases seat-belt use and that increased seat-belt use dramatically decreases accident injury and fatality rates.

A recent letter writer claimed that since millions of people who don’t wear seatbelts have not been killed in accidents, seatbelts don’t save lives.  It would make just as much sense to say that since people who don’t play Russian roulette don’t shoot themselves in the head, Russian roulette isn’t dangerous.

That same letter writer trotted out the ridiculous myth that seatbelts can trap passengers in vehicles that are submerged or on fire.  The fact is that, as documented by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, virtually every study ever conducted indicates that lap and shoulder belts cut the risk of serious or fatal injury by 40 to 55%.

While the Herald may have a journalistic obligation to present both sides of every story, I do not think that obligation extends to printing absurdities and lies.

Jonathan Kamens
Brighton 

It’s exceedingly annoying to me that this wagon costs around $100, and we, like most everyone else nowadays, are hurting enough financially that it’ll be more than a little painful to spend the money to replace it (in fact, because of the cost, we’re not even sure we’re going to).  However, that’s not what I find depressing.

And it’s also annoying that this wagon was a gift from my parents, who are no doubt at some point going to wonder if the children are enjoying it, at which point we’ll have to tell them it was stolen.  Then I’ll have to listen to them lecture me as if I’m a child for leaving it out where it could be taken.  Then they’ll feel compelled to replace it, and we’ll feel compelled to convince them that it isn’t their responsibility, and oh, boy, will that be a fun conversation.

What I find depressing is that there are people in the world who would do something like this, people who would steal not something important like food or clothing, i.e., something a person in trouble might really need and not be able to afford, but just a toy.

What kind of person steals toys from children?

The sign I’ll be posting tomorrow morning is my effort to judge favorably whoever took our wagon.  I’m trying my best to assume that the wagon got blown off of our stoop during one of the recent storms and ended up near the curb or in the street, and someone thought it was up for grabs.  My wife things I’m being naïve.  She’s probably right, but I’d really rather assume the best than believe that someone knowingly stole our wagon.

I’m sure some would say that we were stupid to leave our wagon on our stoop.  I’m sure they’re right, and I’ll be heading out to the hardware store this week to buy a padlock and a security wire to lock all of our bicycles to our porch railing to prevent them from walking off as well.  The fact that I need to do this is depressing.

Intellectually, I know there are mean and dishonest people in the world.  I know that there are people lacking in a moral compass who think nothing of taking things that don’t belong to them.  I know this in my brain, but it depresses me when I think about it with my heart. *sigh*

UPDATE: I put up the sign this morning:

I’m sure it’ll accomplish nothing, but at least doing something about what happened made me feel a little less bad about it.