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A post from DoubleX writer Lauren Bans:
There’s a funny spoof video up on Boing Boing
framed as a PSA of sorts in support of douchebag solidarity. It
features a handful of self-pegged douchebags, one pumping iron at the
gym, another riffing for the amusement of drink-dangling babes at a
bar, all waxing on about the persecution of the douches: “For too long
you’ve told us to shut the fuck up ... that people who are different
from me matter.” But because I evidently cannot take a joke (and this
may in fact make me a douchebag according to the video’s standards) my
first thought was: This is a grossly incorrect use of the word
“douchebag” ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)
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A post from DoubleX writer Lauren Bans:
A few months back, the New York Times ran an alternately fascinating and creepy story about
Japanese men who were in love with their life-size anime plush dolls,
and shamelessly took them everywhere—to the beach, to karaoke (perhaps
singing Aerosmith’s “Rag Doll”?), to the all-you-can-eat salad bar.
Today, Boing Boing touches on another bizarre Japanese dating trend,
this one two-dimensional: a video game girlfriend ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)
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Rachael and Emily, like Bonnie, I am of the better-safe-than-sorry school of parenting.
First, I should say, Rachael has two-plus young children, Emily has two, Bonnie's are grown (correct me if I am mistaken), and I am childless by choice.
I am a bit older than Rachael and remember well the freedom of my childhood. I grew up in a semi-rural suburb of Boston, where we used to take off in the morning, go play on the catwalks (yes, the ones that led to the power lines!), go tramping through tick-infested ponds and swamps, trolling for frogs and salamanders, climb sap-covered trees, and come home right before dark with our white socks soaking wet with swamp muck and our hair matted.
We played baseball and softball in the streets until our parents rang bells out their front doors to call us home for dinner. We sought out an adult only when something went wrong: Kevin is stuck in a tree and is too scared to climb down! Kay has a giant bloody tick on her head! Paul smacked Ellen in the leg with a Whiffleball bat and now she's crying!
It was awesome.
But it was only awesome because no one was seriously maimed, abducted, or otherwise traumatized. And this was pure luck.
I do wonder and worry about these poor kids today, who have to be so constantly supervised: strapped into car seats, unable to wander or take off for an afternoon walk to find someone to play with. No more can they just stroll up to a neighbor's house, ring the bell, and say, "Can Kay come out and play?" It's all prescheduled, prearranged, and it's even called a date!
While Rachael says the kid in the story knew where he was going, had a cell phone, and his mom would be at the soccer field a few minutes after him so would know if he had arrived safely, what would she have done if he hadn't arrived safely? What could she have done?
Since I don't have children, maybe I have an unrealistic idea of what could happen, fueled by too many news stories, movies, and my own parents' paranoia (yes, even they who let me run wild as a child were terrified of crazy things). I have no doubt that the kid was capable, self-reliant, knew where he was going, etc., but his abilities are not at issue. Could not someone have driven up and pulled him into a car and driven off? Or is that just my imagination running wild?
I agree with Bonnie: Better safe than sorry.
The only thing I can compare it to is my dog. I now live in the city, in a neighborhood where the park is in one direction and the street on which you can do all your errands is in another. And so it is a constant dilemma for dog owners: walk the dog and then do errands or take the dog on errands even though it will mean having to tie her up outside? (Is it true or an urban legend that people steal dogs and sell them for science experiments?)
I try to never tie her up outside. If I have to, it will only be at stores that I need to run into for less than a minute with glass fronts so I can see her the whole time. Once I did have to run into the bank to get some quarters for laundry and parking, and I tied her up. I had to wait in a slow-moving line and I was a nervous wreck. Why was I doing this? Would $10 worth of quarters be worth losing her over? How would I explain it to my husband if someone took her? And would I ever forgive myself?
Granted, a dog is not a child: She is not my flesh and blood, not human, and I don't have to worry about guiding her toward independence so I can send her off to college and to become a self-sufficient adult.
But if she were taken, if that kid were taken, wouldn't the parent do anything to get back that moment and make a different decision? I know I would.
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Rachael, you are the same age as my daughter, making me among the lead-paint-exposing, tummy-down-crib-placing cohort of child neglectors whose Gen X children narrowly survived. In fact, I was probably among the worst of the loosey-goosey caretakers of the era, taking risks with my first-grade child that, in retrospect, should have brought the police. The cop who scolded the Mississippi soccer mom for letting her 10-year-old walk a few blocks to the playing field may have over-reacted, but, belatedly embracing my geezer curmudgeon, I say, better safe than sorry. When I was a young single mother in 1978, we lived in the unrenovated Adams Morgan neighborhood of D.C. My little girl's public school was about nine blocks west on Calvert Street from the city bus stop nearest our rented row house. Where a park would form a few years later, my 6-year-old cut daily through a vacant lot strewn with old tires to get to the 40 line stop. I walked with her to the bus stop the first few days of the school year, but after she knew the way, I let my self-sufficient grade-school child set out alone every a.m. with a bus token and a peanut butter sandwich. My daughter survived my cavalier and inexperienced parenting and took her independence with her when she moved to Manhattan for college. As so many of you Generation X achievement goddesses, she grew up fearless at facing her professional and personal challenges. The self-reliance forged in childhood has served her well. That said, I was a nitwit who acted as if the innocent were immune. My neighbors should have blown the whistle on me. That spring, another child the same age as my daughter, destined perhaps for a similar happy future, wasn't as lucky. A set of well-intentioned but naive New York City parents heard a wakeup bell that reverberates today in Mississippi; Washington; New Haven, Conn.; and Ohio. The boy's parents, Julie and Stan Patz, were loving caretakers who, like me, failed to estimate the risk of allowing their 6-year-old to walk two blocks from his apartment door to his school bus. I've just finished reading a new release, After Etan, by my former ABC News colleague Lisa Cohen (who now teaches journalism at Columbia). Lisa's book is a disturbing and harrowing dissection of the unsolved Etan Patz missing child case that "held America captive" for days, weeks, and years after his disappearance. I'm certain that National Missing Children's Day, observed every year on the anniversary of their son's kidnapping, offers little comfort to his parents.
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Rachael, I'm also thoroughly depressed over the story of the cops getting called on the mom who let her 10-year-old walk one-third of a mile to soccer practice alone. Not just because of my own childhood walk to school, over several blocks in Philadelphia that added up to more than a mile (woo hoo). But also because kids need to be able to go places alone for their own sanity. In the New Haven neighborhood I live in now, there's a beloved Italian grocer down the street. My parent friends and I have debated when our kids can go there by themselves, and then lo and behold, one of the dads went ahead and sent his 8-year-old over. Bless him. The next hurdle is the park three blocks away. You have to cross two busy streets to get there, and a couple of years ago a babysitter was raped in the woods that border it. So it's not an easy call—we don't live in a big city, but it's still a city. But I really hope that as my kids turn 10 and then 11 and 12, they can have some sense of the power of their own mobility. When you walk alone, you get to think your own thoughts and make your own choices. Even if it's just when to jump over a crack in the sidewalk or watch a cat curl up on a porch, it matters.
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In today's installment of "Wow, I feel like a geezer" ... I'm feeling like the stereotypical old man who grouses to his grandkids that when he was a kid, "We had to walk five miles to school, uphill each way, in three feet of snow."
BoingBoing picked up this post from a blog called Free-Range Kids. Turns out a mom let her 10-year-old walk one-third of a mile to soccer practice ... wait for it ... by himself. Kind of. He had a cell phone, and anyhow Mom had to be at the soccer field a few minutes after he got there, so she would find out quickly if he arrived safely. Alas, the poor kid got only three blocks before a cop stopped him. When the cop found the mom at the soccer field, he explained that they'd received "hundreds" of calls to 911 and said she could be charged with child endangerment. (I somehow doubt that this small town in Mississippi has the population density to lead to "hundreds of calls.")
I know that my generation (X, if you must know) likes to joke about how it's amazing we survived childhood, without five-point-harness car seats and cribs that had lead paint and parents who let us sleep on our tummies. Of course we can joke about it, because we survived. There's no doubt that improved safety guidelines for children's products and better advice from pediatricians have indeed made us safer. But when I was a kid, I walked to kindergarten by myself. Sure, there were other kids in the neighborhood and we'd walk together when we saw one another, but I knew where I was going and how to stop at the stop signs and look for cars and not talk to strangers. At the pool we swam at every summer, every kid looked forward to turning 10 because that's when you could start going without your parents. (Yes, there were lifeguards.)
I don't know if neighborhoods are safer or more dangerous today than when I was growing up. As with most things, it probably depends on where you live. And no doubt, people are influenced by a 24-hour news cycle filled with accounts of missing Caylees and Elizabeths. But parents need to be able to take reasonable steps to foster independence in their children, free from the meddling of nosy neighbors.
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