Solo Mother

More thoughts on children, independence, and fear

by christina on April 10th, 2008

Some folks responded to yesterday’s post with a “Right on, sister!” while others were terrified, or thought I was nuts for advocating independence for older children. Have you looked at the map of pedophiles in your neighborhood? some asked. One woman wrote an impassioned rant about shooting in schools — um, that happens in one of those sanctioned places we shuttle our precious cargo to and from every day, how is that about letting your kid ride the subway by himself?

The world is full of bad people! they all cried.

Know what?

It’s really not.

And to those of you who keep your children under lock and key, denying them precious alone time to grow and negotiate life without you, to those of you who are terrified of the Others among us, I say OK. Fine. There are bad people out there. I know. The guy down the street whose wife ran the weird antique store? Pedophile and a flasher. Did he get me? Not really. He flashed a group of us at the pool when I was oh I don’t know, ten years old? And I knew enough then to be disdainful of his pathetic attempts at a thrill. I had long been empowered with my own competence. We told the lifeguard, and the issue was dealt with. No one was traumatized. I walked to the pool alone every day and came home at dinner. I swam on the team. I went to the park by myself. I was cognizant of the idea of danger, but knew to be wary of weirdos.

What has changed between now and then? Knowledge. Sex offenders are tagged and labeled for our daily viewing pleasure. Every kidnapping, every disappearance, every random act of violence of man against man is videotaped, chewed up and spewed out for our endless loop viewing. Do you remember when we bombed that building in the first Iraq war with Dubs the Elder? Do you remember watching that video of the square of the roof rushing up in grainy certainty, over and over and over until it wasn’t death and destruction… it was a weird shot of a video game we were all playing. Do you remember Columbine? Do you remember the black coated teenaged shooters? Do you remember the endless images of horror that news announcers routinely announce with barely concealed glee, “This next story contains graphic scenes, you might want to be sure your children aren’t watching..”? This is what we live with, day in and day out. The Fox News Hysterical channel would have you believe we’re all raving lunatics, baby killers and ax murderers.

Here’s my point.

We’re not. We are, for the most part, decent folk trying to make ends meet. So when that mother cried out in terror that the world is full of bad people, I wanted to take her by the shoulders, look her square in the eyes, and take her to a deprogramming camp. We’re not all bad. We’re mostly good. And if the world is full of bad guys then I say, SHAME ON US. SHAME ON THE GOOD GUYS for disappearing. For not speaking up. For not speaking out against the man on the street who grabs his daughter too hard, or the woman who berates her man up and down for a minor fault. Shame on us for not schooling the arrogant bastard in the SUV who takes the corner too hard, runs the red light and never once stops yammering on his cell phone. Shame on us for not keeping an eye out for the kids in our neighborhoods, on the grandmothers and grandfathers too scared to sit on their front stoops of an evening and shoot the breeze with the passers-by. We good guys have to stop being such wimps, pansies, and meek and milds. We have to stop letting the bad guys own the streets. We have to band together to give our children the right of safe passage through this world… without us hovering over them until they are 18.

Make your kindness and your caring a public thing. Protect those who need to be protected, and teach our children how to be strong. Doesn’t take a single mother to know what we’re doing is wrong. Stop being silent. Stop quietly taking it. Make a difference. End the violence. Bring peace to the world, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, across borders and seas and mountains.

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POSTED IN: activism