Hope for the Future After All

As I walked to meet a couple friends for a late dinner the other night, lost in thought, probably thinking about how badly I need a hair cut, or that I should start stuffing my drawers with a bigger sock, I was roused back to reality by the laughter of little girls.

I turned to my right and was delighted to discover a glowing two-man tent on the other side of a fence, in the postage-stamp-sized front yard of a tiny house crammed onto a small wedge of a lot, between a skeezy old church and a hair salon.

I was not delighted in the 'I'm a pervert' sense, like you might have been, pervert, but rather because this is exactly the sort of romanticized childhood activity that I did not think existed anymore--especially in 'the city.'

The girls were playing with flashlights, talking, giggling--totally unaware of the danger they were in, the tempting bait they represented to the countless pedophiles that troll around at night praying to stumble upon this exact situation.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there are at least two parents in this country who refuse to protect their children from life, who refuse to expect worst-case scenarios, who refuse to abandon their faith in mankind--albeit at a risk. No doubt aware of this risk, the parents, or parent, remained out of sight, but ostensibly awake and nearby, projecting their presence loudly at any would-be kidnapper/molester. All the lights in the house were on. The television blared. The front door was wide open, as were the windows.

For all I knew, however, the situation inside the house could have been any of the following:

1. A solitary mom or dad was sleeping on the couch in front of the TV, derelict of duty.
2. A solitary mom or dad was sitting on the floor by the front door, shaking from an overdose of caffeine, clutching a loaded gun, hoping they wouldn't have to use it, hoping they would be able to if they had to, vowing not to sleep that night so his/her child (+1) could have careless fun that night, wondering what that noise was...
3. Two parents were sitting on the couch in front of the TV, dead, killed for the $6 in their wallets as their innocent, oblivious children giggled in the front yard.
4. Two parents were sitting on the couch, eating popcorn, watching Leno, pretending their ears weren't attuned to the slightest changes in the sonic patterns of the cool spring evening, pretending they were cool enough to let their kids be kids without having to worry about it every second, feigning an inability to sleep so they could stay up longer to safeguard their children, thinking every second that they should probably bring the kids inside now just to be on the safe side.

Remember when such activities weren't dangerous? When everything fun didn't have a dark side? When we lived in a Norman Rockwell world of ice cream sundaes, steadies, hot-rods, and baseball cards? When parents didn't sue everybody under the sun when an accident happened? When you didn't hear about every bad thing that ever happened to a child because the news programs used to actually focus on newsworthy events like wars, politics, the economy, global/national culture, etc? When kids could be kids, and only a small percentage of them were kidnapped or raped? I do. It wasn't that long ago.

[Actually, now that I think about it, kids have probably always been safer in their front yard at night than in a church. Ha! It's funny because it's true...]

Yep, kids today sure do have it bad.

"Your grades aren't good? That's nonsense. You're smart. You must just have ADD--here, take this speed. I mean, it's not speed, it has a different name, so it's totally fine. It's medicine. You look depressed. Are you depressed? Here, take these mood-altering drugs with atrocious side effects--but don't you dare ever drink beer or smoke pot or I'll be really mad! I'll go through all your possessions to make sure you're not smoking pot, because I saw a TV movie where a kid was smoking pot and then he got hit by a car. No, you can't go outside now--it's after dark. I saw on the news that a kid in Detroit got killed when he was outside at night. I watched part of the funeral on Oprah. I didn't have time to cook tonight, again, since I'm working two jobs to pay for our meds, so you'll have to eat Burger King again. No, you can't play football--people get paralyzed playing football. Why are you always playing video games? Why are you so fat? Go play in the playground or something, they finally replaced all those scary things like merry-go-rounds and tornado slides and open spaces with three-foot-long plastic slides and really fun games like tic-tac-toe and spin-the-pointless-steering-wheel. I'll drive you..."

Hopefully the backlash has begun; hopefully the pendulum will now swing away from this over-medicated, over-protected, overweight extreme we have been tolerating for the last twenty years, back toward the kinder, gentler, carefree, healthy, grass-stained childhood I remember. A couple girls camping in their front yard have finally given me a reason to believe this might actually happen, and that's a beautiful thing.

Here's to hoping they made it through the night...