safety – The View from a Drawbridge

Aftermarket Tire Siping – Don’t Get Sucked In

Learn from my mistake!

I’m trying really hard to resist the urge to kick myself right now. Usually, I listen to my little voice, and even when it only clears its little throat politely, I start doing research. But yesterday, I was tired.

It’s been my experience that making decisions while tired is never a good idea. And yet when I’m tired, I seem to forget that hard-earned wisdom. Especially when, I’m ashamed to admit, some man is around who is speaking with authority on a subject.

“Whatever you think is best” is so convenient. The decision gets made without having to do any pesky homework. That means there’s less delay between me and my desperately-needed nap.

And anyone reading this who thinks they never do the exact same thing is deluded. Look me in the eye and tell me that in the past 48 hours, you haven’t clicked “I agree” on some website without actually reading the terms and conditions. Take your time. You know where to find me.

Anyway, yesterday, I was on my hellish commute home after a long day at work. I was struggling to keep my eyes open. And the next thing I knew, it felt as if I had run over a concrete block.

The weird thing is I have no idea what caused that. I didn’t see anything on the road. I hadn’t left the road. I guess I’ll have to relegate it to the ever-growing questions-that-will-never-be-answered compartment in my brain.

Shortly after that, my car started pulling to the right. Once you’ve experienced that pull, you never forget how it feels. It’s the oh-f**k-I’ve-got-a flat-tire feeling.

I immediately pulled into the grocery store parking lot. Sure enough. Flat tire.

Now, in pre-marriage days, I’d have called AAA, and since it was during rush hour, I’d settle in for a 3 hour wait. Next, I’d drive to the tire place and spend another hour or so getting the tire repaired or replaced, all the while knowing my dogs were probably doing the pee pee dance and wondering why I wasn’t there yet. The whole drive home I’d be trying not to weep with exhaustion.

Truth be told, in my younger days, I would have changed the stupid tire myself. But my youth has been replaced by laziness and a desire to preserve my back, and better yet, I now have Dear Husband. So I called for help, and just like Mighty Mouse, he came to save the day.

I drove home on a donut, and he graciously took the tire to the tire shop. I tried to stay awake in case I was needed. I really did. I didn’t even go into the bedroom to gaze longingly at the bed. But I did sit in the recliner, and the next thing I knew, the phone rang and nearly launched me into space.

“Mmph. Wha? Hullo?”

“Do you want your tires siped?”

That woke me up. “What does that even mean?”

Now that I was fully conscious, DH had to explain that the tire couldn’t be repaired because the damage was to the sidewall. Then he sent me this picture.

And since even the Subaru website gently admits, without actually saying, that if you replace one tire you need to replace all four, or the balance is thrown off and can cause damage, I was getting a new set of tires. (Dammit!) And since I was doing that, perhaps I should consider siping.

Having never heard that term, and because I was exhausted, I accepted the Les Schwab Tires propaganda: “Siping is the process of cutting thin slits across the surface of a tire to improve traction for driving in snowy, wet or icy conditions. Siping can also help manage tire heat when the road is overly hot.”

Dear Husband was saying something about wanting the safest tires for me, and good gripping on the road, and I was fading again, so I said, “Whatever you think is best,” and then dove into bed and slept the sleep of the stupidly naïve.

A more alert me would have listened to my inner voice. I heard it muttering as I drifted off. “Who in their right mind pays to have thousands of little cuts put into their brand new tires? And if siping improved the safety of tires, why wouldn’t the manufacturer have done it in the first place?”

Well, the short answer is that they do. Large sipes are built into the tread during manufacturing. But Les Schwab does aftermarket siping using a process that they claim “would be too expensive and time-consuming for manufacturers.” To the tune of 15 bucks per tire.

By the time my bullshit detector was fully conscious, the deed had already been done. At least you can learn from my mistake, dear reader! And I’m confident that it was a mistake now. Why?

If you look at the links below, you’ll see that many tire stores actually recommend against siping on their websites. Les Schwab seems to be the only true believer that I came across. Consumer Reports actually did a test, and their conclusion was that “The siped version of both models showed modest but measurable improvements in snow-traction and ice-braking performance. But braking distances on wet and dry pavement were a few feet longer. Besides costing $60 or so for a set of four, having your tires siped potentially voids any tread-wear warranty. We don’t think the modest gains are worth the extra costs.”

The links below also mention that tire siping is illegal in many states, and that doing so to your tires can shorten their service life and hinder their performance. It will also increase noise levels. The increased heat (which is a direct contradiction to the Les Schwab claim) can result in uneven tire wear, and chunks of tire actually breaking off. Even the National Safety Council does not recommend aftermarket siping.

I truly hope Les Schwab believes their own bs, because I have always liked doing business with them up to this point. But if they don’t believe it themselves, and they took advantage of DH’s desire to give me the safest driving experience, that would infuriate me. It will also infuriate me if that extra few feet of stopping distance that Consumer Reports says I’ve lost is all I would have needed to avoid some future collision.

So, yeah, bottom line is don’t voluntarily slash your own tires, regardless of how tired you are. Bad idea. Very bad idea.

Additional Sources:

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A Glaring Omission?

It feels to me like this story comes with a hefty dose of laughing gas.

Sometimes a trending news piece will hit me kind of sideways. It causes me to ask what seems to me to be an obvious question, and yet the article doesn’t answer that question. That makes me wonder if I see the world differently than others, or if, in fact, the media, their subjects, and those who devour the resulting stories have all, collectively, lost their ever-loving minds.

That was my reaction just now when I read a Newsweek story entitled, “Elon Musk Claims ‘Stalker’ Targeted Car With Young Son Inside”. Newsweek didn’t hesitate to mention the son in the headline, to grab your attention. Mission accomplished. I must admit that Elon Musk does not impress me one bit, and it’s a rare occasion when I’m compelled to read anything about him. I think he’s a nitwit. But Newsweek got me when they said “Young Son”. I took the bait.

So I read the short article, which discusses a stalker who followed a car that was carrying his son. The guy apparently blocked the car and climbed up on its hood. Elon says the guy mistakenly thought he himself was in the car, but no such luck.

Elon even tweeted footage of what appears to be a rather well-groomed, unsweaty white male dressed in black, wearing a mask and looking for all the world like the love child of a leading man in an Alfred Hitchock movie and a high-end ninja turtle. And get this: he’s also filming the filmer! There is no explanation as to how this footage was obtained.

The filmer of said footage was able to approach this car, which had its window conveniently rolled down, and not only talk to the guy (who didn’t seem the least bit agitated), but also get a clear, unobstructed view of his license plate. And yet no one seems to wonder how, under those circumstances, the guy managed to get away in his little Hyundai. If any of the elements of this story are true, you couldn’t provide the police with more clues if you covered the guy in neon paint and hung him feet first from a billboard.

It feels to me like this story comes with a hefty dose of laughing gas. We have been habituated to weirdness since 2016. But I still find it astounding that people seem willing to leave their critical thinking at the door, and take this weird story at face value.

The article goes on to say that Elon blocked someone’s Twitter account because it was tweeting the real-time location of his private jet. He discusses the lawsuit he has against this guy, and also mentions that anyone doxing real-time location info of anyone will get their twitter account suspended.

If you aren’t looking closely, it would be easy to assume that his stalker was the guy he’s suing, or at least someone acting on his behalf. But in truth, that connection is never even attempted, let alone established. That’s a strange segue. But that’s not even my primary puzzlement.

My question is, “How did this story become all about Elon and his safety? What about the two-year-old who probably just had the wits scared out of him? Is he okay? And what are you doing to make HIM safe, Elon?”

I mean, for the love of God, he’s talking about lawsuits and doxxing and his own safety when his 2-year-old was probably pooping in his little diaper from the sheer terror of it all. How is that not the main story? A normal parent wouldn’t be thinking about himself in this situation. A normal parent would be so freaked out for his kid that he wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else.

The kid already has enough problems by having a father who seems to lose more of his marbles every single day, a man whose life is a spectacular, slow motion train wreck. And to make matters worse, they name the kid “X Æ A-Xii” so that he’ll feel even more like the richest turd in the punchbowl as he grows up. But you have to wonder how old the kid will have to get before he realizes that it never occurred to his dad to say something like, “I dropped everything to rush to X’s side to make sure he was okay.”

In fairness, I suppose Elon could have done so, but he certainly didn’t give that impression to the reporters, and I suspect he would have. He’s all about trying to spin his image positively, although he often fails spectacularly in that effort. Instead, in this instance, he seems to have been quite focused on his tweeting.

What more proof do you need that Elon Musk cares about nobody but himself? He has turned Twitter into a 24 hour hate fest where there are no holds barred, but heaven forefend someone tweet some publicly accessible information about where his stupid jet is. His kid’s very life is threatened, and Elon’s zeroes in on physical safety violations… directed at him.

There’s more to this story, dear reader. I can feel it. Something is rotten in Musk-land.

It breaks my heart that this cute little kid lives in such a rarefied, drama-filled, overly-entitled environment. In that atmosphere, the odds that he’ll grow up to be mentally healthy, compassionate and decent are extremely long. It’s not fair to him. He never asked for any of this.

He’ll have to become paranoid out of a sense of sheer self-preservation, because no one is at a higher risk for kidnap than the son of someone who was, until quite recently, the richest freakin’ man in the world. In addition, he’ll never know who his friends really are. That right there is a good reason to have trust issues.

As he grows, I dread the stories that X will generate for the media. I anticipate a lot of emotional pain and poor decisions, and some epic rebellion. He has so many hurdles standing between him and any chance of becoming anything approaching a level-headed, content, and happy human being that it will be heartbreaking to behold. I hope he manages to pull it off, though. He could do a lot of good in this world.

I don’t know about you, but I have never had less of a desire to be super rich. Please say a prayer for little X, if you’ve got ‘em. He and his siblings will need all the help they can get.

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Duck and Cover: Its Legacy and the Aftermath

If a child never knows what safety feels like, what kind of adult will that child become?

In my first post about duck and cover drills, I compared and contrasted them to the active shooter drills that students endure today. In the next one, I discussed many of the insane policies that came about due to the sheer panic of the adults who were in charge. Now, let’s get into the ways these drills changed people, and how they reacted to that change.

As the children who were made to cower under their desks got older, they began to realize that the adults had lied to them. Desks can’t save you. Many people now believe that this was a cold war tactic to manipulate the next generation to fear USSR and communism in general. (In fairness, duck and cover might save you from a low-yield bomb that detonated at least 10 miles away, but the subsequent survival would not be pretty.)

This caused many of these kids to reject the system and that, in part, gave rise to the Hippie Movement. Many of them weren’t dropping out of society as much as they were dropping out of the fear of a mass kill off. They figured, if we’re going to die anyway, let’s not think about it. Let’s live for today.

It’s understandable that these kids thought anyone over 30 couldn’t be trusted. But even as a child, I thought that philosophy was terribly short-sighted, because they, too, would turn 30 someday. Then what?

Here are a few posters created to push back against the cold war mindset.

The cold war also inspired a great deal of creativity. The women I spoke to wanted me to recommend several books, songs and movies. I can’t vouch for these recommendations, having not read/seen them all myself, but for those of you who are really interested in this era, I’ll list them here:

Movies:

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Matinee

The Fog of War, a documentary in which Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defense, with tears in his eyes, discusses how close we came to nuclear war.

On the Beach came out in 1959, prior to movie ratings. A lot of the duck and cover kids saw it at a young age, while the cold war was still going on, and it scared the bejeezus out of them. I saw it for the first time about a year ago, and, far removed from its history, and without any duck and cover trauma from my past, it “only” made me want to cry. I do remember reading the book at a young age, though. It was good, but scary. That’s probably why it took me so long to watch the movie.

Catch 22: the movie, the book

More Books:

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. This is not about the era so much as it is about the end of the world vibe.

The Children’s Story by James Clavell

Songs:

The Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire

Wooden Ships by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young or Wooden Ships by Jefferson Airplane. Which do you like better?

Hammer to Fall by Queen. That first link shows the lyrics, but if you already know them, I suggest this video, which shows Freddie Mercury in all his incredible glory. (God, I miss him.)

But honestly, so much good music was inspired by the cold war that I could go on forever. Instead, I suggest you check out this article entitled, Cold War Music: A Top Ten List for a deep, eclectic dive.

Clearly, all this fear mongering seems to have backfired for our government. Many of these duck and cover kids became lifelong pacifists and activists against war and nukes. Even more of them grew up to distrust authority and they still have the mindset that you should do what you need to do now, as tomorrow not guaranteed. For some, that sometimes resulted in poor decisions, but others matured into an attitude of gratitude and a feeling that nothing should be taken for granted.

Many of the duck and cover generation, especially the ones that had been plagued with night terrors or nightmares as children, are still stewing in toxic existential dread as adults. That should not come as a surprise. They were taught that the world will end in their lifetime, and that something bad would suddenly happen at some unspecified time. No one should have to live with that type of free floating anxiety.

One woman said, “When kids can’t trust their own instincts, it creates a feeling of powerlessness and an unstable relationship with those in power.”

I was not old enough to be tortured by the cold war antics of the adults all around me, and yet I can relate to that statement entirely. If you have a rational thought at age 7, and everyone ignores it or continues to behave irrationally even though they’re supposed to be in charge, you tend to question authority quite a bit.

Despite everything that one woman from the duck and cover generation went through, she still feels more sorry for the children of today who are enduring the active shooter drills. She said the red threat seemed too far away to worry about, whereas today’s kids see mass shootings on the news that are taking place in their own back yards all the time. That danger is too close for children to ignore. They can’t even pretend to feel safe under those circumstances.

For the duck and cover kids, the treats were mostly from the outside. Today most the threats are close enough to touch. That’s a sobering thought.

This is not the time for the adults, whose primary purpose should be to make children feel safe, confident, and loved, to instead model instability, irrationality, fear, and hatred, all while actively destroying the very planet on which we depend for survival. As a society, we subject our children to terrorism. If a child never knows what safety feels like, what kind of adult will that child become?

Drills should not be about transferring adult anxieties to children. They should be reassuring. They should be honest. They should answer questions, but they also should make it very clear that these drills exist so the ADULTS can be sure they keep everyone safe in the case of an emergency.

If schools insist on doing drills, for the children’s well-being they should combine them with tornado, earthquake, or fire drills. They are anxiety-producing, yes, but at least kids will think the enemy is the weather or faulty wiring, not some insane human being who is actively wanting to kill them. Perhaps turn it into a quarterly safety day designed to teach kids how to be part of a school community working together to remain safe and strong, rather than an exercise in helplessness.

The teachers, on the other hand, should have more in depth training, because they should all be on the same page as to what the plan will be. But that training should be done without students present. Anything more intense than that does more harm than good. After receiving such training, these teachers could then talk to the students, calmly, and say, “In the event of xyz, here’s what you will see the teachers do, and here’s what we may ask you to do. Just so you know.”

And, for the love of God, can we please not manufacture anxiety in children and parents where none need exist? Children should not be pawns in a political game. They should not be taught to fear Critical Race Theory, for example, especially since no public school in this country ever taught it in the first place. They should not be taught that wearing face masks and getting vaccines, as recommended by all public health professionals, is anything more than just that: a way to keep the public healthy and demonstrate your consideration toward those around you. And most of all, we should not be prioritizing our desire for automatic weapons over the very lives and mental health of our children.

It’s a much better tactic to give kids a feeling that their leaders are being rational and will know what to do in a crisis. Let them be children while they still can. Why on earth would anyone want to do otherwise?

If there’s any value in distrusting the Russians, we should be less worried about bombs and more worried about the fact that we aren’t teaching children to think critically, and we ourselves are buying into Russian disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories.

Khrushchev wanted to bury us. He didn’t. But disinformation will do so if we don’t all take a deep breath and employ a bit of critical thinking. Destruction doesn’t require bombs or bullets these days. It just requires the masses to be ignorant, gullible, lazy, and accepting of social media that is not fact checked or moderated in any significant way.

But we’re too jaded to fall for Cold War fear mongering. Aren’t we? Apparently not. We elected Trump, who taught his base to fear immigrants, education, healthcare, and democracy.

And we need to give up this insane love affair with automatic weapons. Kids today are a lot less worried about being fried to a nuclear crisp than they are of having bullets tumbling at them at a rate of 40 rounds per minute, leaving an unidentifiable corpse. That feeling, right there, is what we are doing to this generation. I can’t even imagine being a student these days.

One thing’s for certain. We are letting these kids down with all our thoughts and prayers. Rest assured that there will be long-range societal consequences, and they will be impossible for us to predict. If we insist on fearing anything, we should fear that. Shame on us all

Special thanks to the women of the Facebook Group Crones of Anarchy!, for revealing so much about their duck and cover experiences.

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The Insanity of Duck and Cover

“In the event of an attack, put a mattress over your front door.”

As I mentioned in my last post, Active Shooter Drills: The New Duck and Cover, children were told to do some very insane things during the duck and cover era. I’m sure a lot of these adults meant well, but the science behind nuclear fallout was poorly understood by much of the general population, and they were in such a panic that they came to some very strange conclusions. Those duck and cover drills were created by people with the best of intentions. But what they turned into were general panic-fests, studies in misinformation , and psychologically damaging safety theater.

There’s actually something to the duck and cover concept. You can survive a nuclear bomb if it’s low-yield, and doesn’t detonate within 10 miles of where you are ducking and covering. It really is worth it to be able to plot out a blast radius.

What follows are some of the insane policies enacted by politicians, teaching professionals, and just about anyone old enough not to be restricted to the kiddie rides at the county fair. These people should have known better. With the tiniest bit of scientific curiosity, any responsible person wouldn’t have subjected children to any of these things.

One school actually had the children tattoo their blood type in case they needed transfusions.
Many others had kids wearing dog tags that included their name, address, DOB, and blood type. Some made those children put those dog tags in their mouths during drills, and children quickly realized that that was so people would be able to identify their bodies.
One parent told their child not to eat freshly fallen snow because it could have fallout from nuclear bomb tests.
Many households stashed supplies despite having no bomb shelters.
Kids were taught that when they heard the air raid sirens, they should run home as fast as they could.
Some were instructed to put a mattress over the front door at home in the event of an attack.
One woman noted that her town’s only nuclear fallout shelter was in the basement of the local Sears store, but it was common knowledge that most people wouldn’t make it there in time, and if they did, they wouldn’t all fit.
And let’s not forget the fact that many of these shelters had no plumbing whatsoever.
But in the event that there was a functioning toilet nearby, children were told that a toilet tank was a safe source of drinking water, but they weren’t told what to do when that ran out.
And no one questioned these bomb shelters’ air intakes. Were they all filtered? How?
I once did a blog post entitled Seattle’s Weird Cold War Relic which will tell you all you need to know about this country’s lack of comprehension and extreme irrationality regarding the big picture of nuclear war.

In Jacksonville, my old stomping grounds, children were instructed to bring backpacks to school that contained canned fruit and vegetables, a bleach bottle filled with water, hard candy, and sugar cubes. These packs were left in the cloakroom. During drills, the children would take these backpacks and walk 3 blocks down to railroad tracks. In an emergency, they were told that a train would come and whisk them to safety. The children took these drills as an opportunity to share the hard candy. Some of them wondered where these trains were waiting, and/or how they would ever find their parents again if they were loaded onto a train.

Meanwhile, at a school in Seattle, children were lined up along the perimeter of the school grounds, facing outward, and were told that in the event of an actual attack, school busses would come and take them to safety. One woman found that to be very creepy, just as I would have. She vowed to never get on that bus. She had an escape route plotted out. (And to her I say, “Come sit by me.”)

In one district, parents were asked to write a letter to their kids in case of disaster. Many of these letters said something along the lines of, “Goodbye, I love you. Here’s the phone numbers of distant relatives, just in case.” When the children changed schools, the parents got the unopened letters back and they were asked to pass them along to the next school, or provide a new letter for their now older child. Those letters must have been horrible to have to write.

One school decided to conduct an experiment. All the students were to run home as fast as they could. Ready, set, go! They were timed in their efforts to see if it was feasible to do that in the event of an attack. Nope. Since they were all good kids, they obediently returned to school after that failed endeavor.

Many teachers made it clear that these duck and cover drills were an exercise in futility, which added to the anxiety, while other teachers totally freaked out, leaving children to conclude that adults were crazy and no one was in charge. One teacher, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, burst into tears and told the marching band, who had been practicing on the football field, that he was proud of them and didn’t know if they’d get to perform their show or not. He then walked inside, leaving them standing on the field.

Another girl’s first grade teacher marched her class outside to the water side of the New Orleans levees, and then she told them that in the event of a real nuclear attack, the kids should run there and cover themselves in “at least” 6 inches of mud. (And breathe how, exactly? And how long were they supposed to stay buried like that? Weeks?)

A few Catholic school stories were told. (Those are always fun.) One class was supposed to pray during the drills but giggled instead. They were told that prayers would keep the nukes away. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, one school had 800 kids in parking lots chanting the Rosary for an hour. Later, a nun said they had saved the world because God had heard them. In another school, the children were asked if the communist came, would you renounce your faith and live, or never renounce it and be killed? One six-year-old girl said she would renounce and live. For that she was beaten until she could barely stand.

This was a time when children were often reciting the pledge of allegiance in a building that had been designated to be a nuclear fallout shelter. In some cases, the basements beneath their feet were full of civil defense crackers. What a strange world to grow up in.

Some teachers made a point of telling students that the Soviets and the Chinese and the Cubans lied to their people about America, and the only way to save ourselves from these evil people was to duck and cover, because they could drop the bomb any second. Meanwhile, one woman who grew up in Eastern Europe said she and her fellow students were being told the same thing about the United States.

It is interesting to note that children who went to Department of Defense (DOD) schools often report that they were never subjected to duck and cover drills. Was that because the parents who worked there had already drank the Kool-Aid, so no further fear mongering was required, or was it because they already knew enough to realize these drills were futile? There’s no real way to know, now.

If you’d like to experience some of the cold war propaganda firsthand, check out the following:

Duck And Cover (1951) Bert The Turtle This is the ultimate indoctrination movie that most children were forced to watch. (I tried to pretend that I was watching this at age 7, and I still have a knot in my stomach because of it. One woman told me that she came home and told her mother a confusing story about turtles and ducks in covers afterward.)

Fallout: When And How To Protect Yourself (1959) While watching this one, I was struck by its naivete. Sure, you can go out for brief periods. Just wear a raincoat and rubber boots.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Films HD Movies like this one were sometimes shown as a sort of cautionary “this could happen to you” tale in the 1950’s and 60’s. Its focus seems to have been the impact on the buildings. Human beings are only mentioned twice, as a mere afterthought. I’m sure that when this movie was shown to children, the fact that America is the only country to have ever used nuclear bombs in combat, and that those bombs were deployed over civilian cities, was conveniently ignored.

These children were quite often shown the footage of the nuclear tests that we conducted on Bikini Atoll from 1946 to 1958 as well. I’m quite sure that most of us have seen at least one of those, if only in the form of a still photograph.

One woman remembered being shown a film about how to deal with a body should someone die in your bomb shelter. It said to wrap the body in plastic, open the door, put the body outside, and quickly shut the door again. She was 12 years old when she saw that. I looked high and low for that film. I think she is referring to the British Protect and Survive films that were made between 1974 and 1980, which were classified by the government and only intended for release in the event of dire emergency, but they were leaked to the public.

Now anyone can watch these public information films on Youtube here. (The one that deals with body disposal is about a minute and a half long, and appears around minute 57 of this compilation.)

Even more troublesome, there was a movie that came out in 1984 called Threads. It is based on information from the Protect and Survive films, and is considered by many to be the most terrifying film ever made. I hope no child ever sees that. It’s available on many streaming platforms. I see that I can see it on Amazon Prime. Now I just have to work up the courage to do so. If I ever do, I’ll be sure to give you a full report.

In my next blog post, I’ll be writing about the impact of these duck and cover drills, and how they still influence our culture to this day.

Special thanks to the women of the Facebook Group Crones of Anarchy!, for revealing so much about their duck and cover experiences. I’ve learned so much from all of you, and I hope my blog posts do the subject justice.

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Active Shooter Drills: The New Duck and Cover

When these drills are conducted, the kindergarteners are just terrified.

Here’s everything you need to know about our warped American gun culture: When looking up statistics for the number of mass shootings in this country, I was actually relieved to discover that, according to this report in Statista, since 1982, these atrocities have only occurred in 38 states (plus Washington DC). We’re still horrified by these events, but we’re also becoming habituated to them.

Of course, Statista goes on to clarify that they’re only counting those shootings that were reported. They also note that, “since 2013, the source defines a mass shooting as any single attack in a public place with three or more fatalities, in line with the definition by the FBI. Before 2013, a mass shooting was defined as any single attack in a public place with four or more fatalities.” So the numbers are probably a bit low. Great.

They also point out that, of the 137 incidents considered, 13 of the worst mass shootings in the United States have occurred since 2015. The vast majority of the shooters in these incidents were white males, and since 2000, police have intercepted 351 active shooter incidents in the U.S. Until we call these events what they are, domestic terrorism, they’ll never be taken seriously by this government. But this government is hesitant to call white males terrorists. Or rapists. Or anything else, for that matter.

When I was in public school in the late 70’s, early 80’s, one time, one time, someone brought a knife into a classroom. It was a huge scandal. The kid didn’t even use it, and he wasn’t even in any of my classes, but it took me months to feel safe again after that. It just didn’t occur to anyone at the time to bring weapons onto school grounds. Well, except for that kid. He’s probably the CEO of some major corporation now.

Little did I know that those were the salad days of public education. I fell in the sweet spot between duck and cover and active shooter drills. I was never made to crawl under my desk in anticipation of nuclear annihilation or bloody death. Not once.

Nowadays, kids are subjected to those active shooter drills along with their totally whitewashed and historically inaccurate lessons. I often wonder how that is fundamentally changing this generation’s perspective. It’s sad to contemplate. My research on the topic broadened my worldview to the extent that it is resulting in three posts, of which this is the first.

According to this article, as of 2017, 95 percent of all public schools conduct active shooter drills. They can be as mild as just going through the motions of turning off lights and locking doors to the extreme of playing gunshot sounds over the loudspeakers while actors dressed as gunmen roam the halls. I don’t know about you, but that extreme end would seriously freak me out, and I’m 57. I can’t imagine how a 7-year-old would handle it. A kindergarten teacher told me recently that when these drills are conducted, she tries to keep the students calm, but they’re just terrified.

The article goes on to describe a study that was conducted by Georgia Tech regarding active shooter drills. Just by comparing the social media texts of community members from 90 days before a drill to 90 days after, they concluded that there is a 42 percent spike in anxiety and a 39 percent increase in depression for months afterward, and not just in the students. The teachers and parents were similarly impacted.

Frankly, I’m of the opinion that drills, as we Americans conduct them, don’t actually prepare you for any catastrophic event. They don’t empower you. Our drills teach fear and panic. When the stuff hits the fan, if you’ve been living in a state of constant, low-grade fear as politicians make us do, all bets are off. You get primal. And quite often you make poor decisions. Now, throw hundreds of small children into that mix, and you have chaos. I’ll be offering suggestions as to how to improve these drills in my third post.

But these drills, in their current format and cultural context, are nothing other than safety theater. They allow bureaucrats to give the impression that they’re doing something, when, if they really wanted to do something, they’d be advocating against weaponry, beefing up security, and insisting upon more mental health professionals on staff. Instead, we want to look like we’re doing something, so we do something. Not the right thing. Not the reasonable thing. Not the thing that makes an actual difference. But, hey, we are doing something.

While wondering about the psychological effects of active shooter drills, I began to think about the duck and cover drills that, thank God, had just stopped being commonplace a year or two before I went to school. I really feel sorry for those who had to experience them. I probably would have been that child who said, “Why do you think our desk will protect us from a bomb? How stupid is that?” And then I would have done what I was told, because I may have had a big mouth, but I was still a good kid.

I happen to be a member of a Facebook group that is mostly comprised of women from the duck and cover era, so I decided, out of curiosity, to ask them what their experience was like. I did this a about a year ago. I don’t know why it took me so long to write this blog post. Perhaps I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared for the amount of insight I would gain from these women. (I had good intentions of getting this done. I lugged about 150 printed out pages of their comments back and forth to work for months. My backpack is so heavy that it triggers my car to insist on a passenger side seat belt, such is the weight of my unfinished projects.)

My post to that group said the following: “I am just young enough to have missed those cold war bomb drills that children used to have to do. You know. Duck and cover, because your desk will save you. (Sheesh.) I was wondering how many of you remember doing that. What did you think as a child? Do you think it changed the way you view the world? Was there common knowledge that these drills were an insane waste of time back then, or was there a general buy-in of this concept?

Those questions must have hit a nerve, because I got 400 replies. I wasn’t expecting that. No two people are the same, so naturally there were a variety of ways that these kids processed the duck and cover experience.

I’d say that about 55 percent were either bored silly by these drills, thinking of it as a nice break from math class, and/or too clued in to think that duck and cover would do any good at all. At the other end of the spectrum, about 30 percent were seriously freaked out by the process. (I’m quite sure I would have been in this group, even if I had been clued in.) The rest seemed to have been confused by it all, and since the adults around them weren’t telling them anything rational or understandable or true, they didn’t know what to think. That’s a really unpleasant state for a child to be in.

The 50’s and 60’s were a high stakes time to be a kid in America. Most of that generation had no expectations of living to adulthood. During the cold war, the brinkmanship displayed made them feel like the inmates were running the asylum. And when they heard about Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the table, the kind of thing that really gets a child’s attention, that provided them with all the confirmation they needed that the adults in charge were crazy. (The shoe incident made such an impression on me, a decade after the fact, that to this day I could swear I’d seen footage of it, but no such footage exists. Isn’t that strange?)

That generation’s anxiety reached its peak during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many of children concluded that the Russians hated them personally and wanted to kill them, but they didn’t understand why. They came by their reactions honestly. Here is some of the propaganda of the era that they were treated to every single day:

These kids also bore witness to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and both Kennedys. And, lest we forget, many of these children were growing up in the south and dealing with the KKK, segregation, and an utter lack of human rights as well, so they felt more anxiety from terrorists within the country than they did from communists a half a world away.

What follows are several points that the amazing women in my Facebook group proffered for your consideration. I’ll paraphrase the comments and avoid specifics so that I don’t have to track people down to get permission to quote them. (Sorry, ladies.)

Duck and Cover Drills came in a variety of forms. As the name implies, many students had to crawl under their desks with their hands protecting their necks and/or the backs of their heads. Others were ushered into hallways to hunker down in rows, facing the walls or the banks of lockers. Some went down into the creepy, dirty basements of their schools. One woman reported that her class had to walk single file, with the teacher at the head, and she’d drop them off at their houses, one by one by one. (I’m assuming this was a small town.) Not only was that hard on the teacher, but it must have been creepy for the last group of children on the route, thinking about radiation raining down upon them with every step they took. Location, location, location, as the saying goes.

There seemed to be a wide range of communication or lack thereof, about these drills. Some kids were told entirely too much, in my opinion. Small children should not be shown videos of mushroom clouds and disintegrating buildings and melting bodies. Eight-year-olds shouldn’t memorize all the signs and symptoms of radiation poisoning or be instructed on the best ways to build and stock bomb shelters. All that should be the realm of adults.

On the other end of the spectrum, a lot of children were not told anything at all, and were left to draw their own, sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying conclusions, including the following:

“Fallout” meant things falling from the ceiling, and therefore climbing under their desks made perfect sense.
The Russians would come and take them from their parents and/or they’d never see their families again.
Bombs must not be much of a threat if the solution was to hide under a desk.
Every plane that flew over had the potential to kill them.
I don’t want to die crouching in a hallway.
While we do these drills in school, are the adults doing the same thing in the bomb shelters?
My parents will be blindsided unless they keep the radio on.
These floors are really dirty.
The boys are trying to look up my skirt.
At least we don’t have to freeze outside like we do for fire drills.
How will I find my family?
Walking home was scary, because if a plane flew over you didn’t have your desk to save you.
Some were scared for their parents because they didn’t have a teacher to keep them safe like the kids did.
The Communists or some vague enemy would break in any minute, and that would be the end.
They only practiced these drills at school, so school seemed dangerous.
One girl, whose school had them pressing their noses against a wall, thought that the paint must be strong if it could save her from the bomb.

Some children comforted themselves with the belief that nothing bad was going to ever happen to them because they lived in America and that was the safest, smartest, strongest place in the world. Others thought that since Russia beat us into space, they must be more militarily advanced. Those were likely the same children who went home and tried to build bomb shelters out of cardboard boxes in their back yards or basements. One brilliant girl even surrounded hers with lead pencils, because she had heard that lead would protect her.

In hindsight, many women were grateful for the honesty some adults were willing to provide. Some kids were told how painful their deaths might be, and actually found comfort in the idea that they were at ground zero and would die instantly. Photographs from Hiroshima made it clear that immediate death would be preferable. One woman remembers being grateful for just being sent home to be with her family during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At least that was honest.

And I found this quite interesting. It seems that nearly everyone was told that their location was a prime target. They lived near military bases. They lived near factories or power plants or big cities like Washington DC, New York, or Chicago. They lived near a transportation hub. In the heartland, the communists would target their farms to starve the country. And everyone in Florida, to this very day, knows that Cuba is only 90 miles away.

Everyone seemed to believe that they would be the first to go. No one stopped to think that Russia couldn’t bomb everywhere at once. If they could, there would be nothing left of this planet.

No matter what they thought, these kids did these drills because that’s what they were told to do. Unfortunately, they were told to do some very insane things. I’ll discuss that in my next post, The Insanity of Duck and Cover.

Special thanks to the women of the Facebook Group Crones of Anarchy!, for revealing so much about their duck and cover experiences. You guys are awesome!

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Bridge Woman

Everyone deserves a place where they feel safe.

As you prepare to eat a nice warm meal on this Thanksgiving day (provided you’re are able to overlook the disturbing colonial overtones of this holiday), and whether you’re spending the day with family or friends or all alone, I hope that you remember to count your blessings, dear reader. I know I’m making a lot of assumptions about your circumstances, but the fact that you have access to the internet tells me that, like me, you’re a lot better off than many people are.

I’d like to tell you about someone who doesn’t have it as good as we do. As I write this, she’s sorting through garbage in a ditch, not 20 yards from where I sit. Perspective.

Here at work, I spend a great deal of time watching the comings and goings of the people who cross my drawbridge. After doing this for a while, I began to spot patterns. I’ve learned people’s routines. I’ve created backstories about them in my head, which, admittedly, are quite likely inaccurate, but it helps me feel a certain kinship with these people, even though they probably don’t even know I exist.

In the past month or so, I’ve been seeing quite a bit of someone that I’ll call “Bridge Woman”. I considered calling her “Drainage Ditch Woman”, but that seems undignified. And she needs all the dignity she can get.

I suspect that this woman is mentally ill and/or homeless. She spends hours on the bridge approaches, sitting on the curb that separates the sidewalk from the bike lane. She is completely engrossed in the detritus that flows down the drainage ditch. It’s as if she is panning for gold. She doesn’t even look up when someone goes past.

She sorts through the gunk, sifting out little bits of God-knows-what, and puts those things in what she deems to be their proper place. Some things are placed on the sidewalk, some on the curb, and apparently some things don’t pass muster and are returned to the ditch. I’ve tried to figure out her method of categorization, but I’ve yet to succeed.

She doesn’t do anyone any harm, and it is, after all, a public sidewalk, and she’s far enough away from the part of the bridge that moves to be safe, so I let her be. And I’m painfully aware that her odds of continuing to “be” are a lot higher when she sits on this bridge and quietly organizes away. Here, she’s relatively safe. No one hassles her. No one influences her or takes advantage of her vulnerability. If anyone tries to hurt her, there are witnesses. I strongly suspect that these things can’t be said about the rest of her days or nights.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, women comprise only 29 percent of the homeless individuals (as opposed to families) in this country. This means they’re greatly outnumbered in most places. Women who are unsheltered have a much higher risk of premature death, mainly due to mental health and chronic health issues. And, “The rates of victimization and assault, including robbery, physical abuse, and sexual assault are much higher for women than men.”

An article entitled, “Rates of violence against the homeless are worse than you think” spells it out in upsetting detail. It also contains a link to a comprehensive report entitled, “Vulnerable to Hate: A Survey of Bias-Motivated Violence against People Experiencing Homelessness which details stats from 2016-2017.”

Here are some of the statistics from the article and that report that jumped out at me:

Life expectancy for someone who is homeless is 20-30 years less than the general population.
About 13,000 American homeless people die on the streets each year.
1 in 3 homeless people have been deliberately hit, kicked, or experienced some other form of violence, including having things thrown at them. Some are urinated on, intimidated or threatened, or verbally abused or harassed.
While 1-3% of the general youth population report sexual assault, 21-42% of homeless youth have reported sexual assault. 1 in 3 teens are lured into prostitution within 48 hours of living on the street.
1 in 3 homeless youth engage in survival sex.
The experience of violence in the lives of homeless women: A research report, showed that 78.3% of homeless women in the study had been subjected to rape, physical assault, and/or stalking. Those who experience such assault while homeless also lack access to legal, medical and mental health services, which can worsen the post traumatic effects of the experience.
The report also briefly focused on Seattle, my city, by saying, “many cities do not often provide free public restrooms that are easily accessible. For example, Seattle, which has the third-largest homeless population in the U.S, only had one functional 24-hour restroom, downtown, as of 2015.”

Homelessness is a rough life for anyone, but it’s even more so for women. So when I see Bridge Woman organizing garbage in the ditch, oddly enough I’m happy she’s there. Yes, I would like much more for her, but given the current state of the world, I think that that ditch is probably a safer place than many of her current societal alternatives. It makes me sad, but I genuinely believe that it’s true.

As winter approaches, and the cold, raw, Seattle weather settles in for the duration, I worry about Bridge Woman. I’m relieved to see that she now has warm clothing and good shoes, and she looks clean enough that she would blend in with the general population if only she were not so focused on the task at hand. I assume that she has been in contact with someone who cares, at least, either personally or professionally.

I hope her situation improves even more.

It probably won’t.

When the ditch is flooded with icy water, she may not enjoy her project quite as much. She’ll most likely choose to pass her time elsewhere. I hope that she continues to find safe places, ideally places that are warm and dry, where she won’t be hassled, even if it’s only for a few hours a day.

Gazing out the window at her, I count my blessings and think that she deserves better. I wonder if people understand how much we have let this woman down, or if they think she gets more than she’s entitled to. I have no idea what she wants or what she can get. I hope she is loved.

At a bare minimum, I’d like to think that all but the most cold-hearted among us can agree that everyone deserves a place where they feel safe. I’m glad my bridge has provided her with that kind of respite, if only for a short time.

I hope, dear reader, that like me, you use this holiday to give thanks for all that is good in your life, rather than thinking back, with pride, on the wholesale theft of this continent and all the bloodshed that was required to rip it from the hands of the people who were already here. If so, then Happy Thanksgiving!

Gratitude should not require a holiday. But if you’re giving added focus to it on this day, please consider ordering my book, Notes on Gratitude. And happy Thanksgiving, dear reader. I’m so glad you’re here!

Some Scary Statistics

Some dogs don’t let go.

On this, the day before Halloween, I wanted to write something scary. A ghost story. A campfire story that would give all the kiddies a shiver. Fun scary, not scary scary. You get the idea.

But the very moment I had that thought, an article popped up on my computer screen entitled, 2 Children Killed, Mother Hospitalized After Family Pit Bulls Attack Them Outside Tennessee Home. And I realized that this was a topic that is scary/important.

I know this post will ruffle feathers, so I wanted to start off by saying that I love dogs. I really do. I always have. But love brings with it a certain responsibility, and in order to make responsible decisions, one must have information. And all the information I’m providing below can be found if you read all of the links I provide. So here goes.

There are an estimated 90 million pet dogs in America, and they gift us with 4.5 million bites per year. While it’s true that “only” 40-50 Americans die each year from dog attacks, 26% of those fatalities fall in the 0 to 2-year old age range. These children never had a say in what dangers they would be exposed to. And it’s noteworthy that 77% of all maulings come from the family dog or a dog known to the victim.

Between 1982 and 2021, 931 people have been killed by dogs in the U.S. and Canada.

Still, when you consider that we’re talking 90 million dogs in America today, the odds of getting killed by one are startlingly small, almost to the point of insignificance. Unless, of course, you are a victim.

A responsible pet owner makes sure that her/his/their dog, regardless of its temperament, is not put in a position where harming someone is even a possibility. Dogs should be adequately trained, not allowed to roam free, not neglected or abused, and, whenever possible, kept away from situations that might trigger aggression or any type of startle response.

Now, here’s where I get controversial. Let’s delve into pit bulls specifically. I know several people who absolutely love pit bulls, and swear that their dogs are gentle and loving companions that wouldn’t hurt a fly. Yes, the odds are in their favor that this will remain the case. Statistically, it’s true that we humans are 21 times more likely to be killed by a mosquito than we are to be killed by a dog of any breed.

But.

Choosing a pet should be more than just an emotional decision. Yes, I’m willing to concede that pit bull puppies are about as cute as they come. But you are about to allow a creature into your world who, once large enough, is physically capable of killing you or someone you love. (And bear in mind, two 6-month-old pit bull puppies once killed a 7-year-old boy.) Fortunately, most dogs would never make that choice. But it’s something to think about, especially if you have children or other pets.

When choosing a dog, you should consider the disposition of the breed in question. Pit bulls were not bred to be “nanny dogs” as some would have you believe. This article explains the long and complicated history of pit bulls, but the bottom line is that they were originally bred for bull baiting. When that became illegal, they were used in illegal dog fighting. Aggression is what people were seeking when they bred these dogs, and I guarantee that as you read this, pit bulls are fighting in rings all over the world.

A horrific side effect of the history of the aggressive manipulation of this breed is that pit bulls are still the most abused dogs on earth. That certainly doesn’t do anything to improve their disposition, and given that one survey indicates that 41% percent of animal rescue staff would lie about a pit bull’s personal aggressive history in order to find him or her a home, in this instance I would actively discourage dog rescue with regard to pit bulls. There are so many other rescue dogs out there who need your love and attention. I hope you’ll turn your eyes to them.

Pit bulls have a bite force of 235 PSI (pounds of force per square inch). That is similar to a lot of industrial machines that most parents would never let their children play around. There are actually many breeds with a stronger bite force, but pit bulls combine their bite force with an extreme level of tenacity. Some dogs just don’t let go.

Contrary to the persistent myth, a pit bull’s jaws don’t lock. It isn’t that they can’t let go, it’s that they won’t let go once they’re in frenzied attack mode. And to me, that’s even scarier.

When getting a pet, one’s first concern should be public safety, which, of course, includes the safety of you, your loved ones, your friends, and your neighbors. This is why the vast majority of us don’t have lions or tigers or bears curled up on our living room couches. It’s just a bad idea.

So, set aside emotions when making your choice. Look at cold, hard, statistics. They don’t lie. They don’t have an opinion. And below is some pit bull information that I found extremely easy to obtain. I’ll start with the most incontrovertible truth, and the statistic that would be all I’d need to know, personally, in order to give a pit bull a pass:

In the past 16 years, from 2005 to 2020, pit bulls have been responsible for 67%, or 380 dog bite fatalities, in America.

The next most deadly breed is the rottweiler, and they are responsible for 9%, or 51 bite fatalities. All other breeds pale in comparison to those two.

That, to me, is scary. But I hope it doesn’t scare you off dogs in general. The truth is, you have a 1 in 73 chance of getting bit by a dog in the US, and your odds of dying from a dog bite are 1 in 118,776. That’s not bad at all, actually. But from a logical standpoint, you might want to avoid the possibility of greatly improving your chances of being bitten or killed by avoiding the breed that does most of that biting and killing.

Even the Pitbull Federation of South Africa, an organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the American Pit Bull Terrier in South Africa, an organization that always wishes to portray the breed in a positive light, is realistic about these dogs. They strongly encourage sterilization, and in a public statement, they stressed that they feel that, unfortunately, “99% of pit bull terrier owners should not own a pit bull and that these dogs are owned not because the breed is loved by their owners but because of the standing owning this breed gives the owners in society.”

If you want to read a very detailed statistical breakdown of North America’s scariest encounters with man’s best friend, which includes 9 pages of horrific descriptions of some of the more unusual encounters, I urge you to download this report. Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, September 1982 to December 31, 2021.

In an effort to give you balanced information on this subject, I spent hours looking at several sources, but I tend to rely more on those that provide actual statistical evidence. One such source, which spells out the rarity of dog bite fatalities, but also makes clear the risk factors involved, is the National Canine Research Association of America. They also put out a simple flyer that spells out the most salient points: 15 Year U.S. Dog Bite Fatality Chart – 2005 to 2019

If, after reading all the statistics, you’re still on the fence about pit bulls, then I strongly encourage you to read the many articles listed on a page entitled Voices of pit bull experience. And then, if that isn’t gut-wrenching enough for you, check out this article, entitled Pit bull “nanny dogs” kill three children, two adults, in nine days.

You’re probably wondering if I’m saying you should have your pit bull euthanized if you already own one. I know what it’s like to love a dog. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and my answer would be no, but with a few caveats.

If your dog has displayed worrying signs of aggression, then, sorry, yes, it should be put down. If you have small children, even if your dog has displayed no aggression, your dog should not be allowed around those children unless it is completely under your physical control and supervision. If you are unwilling or unable to provide a pit bull with the continual training and socialization it requires, or if you are not doing everything possible to ensure that your dog isn’t running the streets unsupervised, or if you are neglecting or abusing that dog in any way, then at a bare minimum, your dog should be taken in by someone who is willing to step up to the increased responsibilities that this breed demands.

Keeping your pit bull is potentially a life and death decision. I encourage you to check your emotions at the door and ask yourself if you are doing everything you need to do to ensure the safety of those around you. If you can say yes to that without hesitation, then go for it, but please reassess frequently to make sure you are not becoming complacent.

The biggest takeaway from this post, I suppose, it that, when it comes time to adopt your next dog, I hope you’ll consider all the other breeds out there who need your love and care, and choose one of those. Why throw the potential kill factor into the mix? Pit bulls just aren’t worth the risk.

In the interests of full disclosure, I currently have two dogs. Nelly is a mixed breed old couch potato who leaves the room when anyone approaches. Quagmire, the dachshund, can be aggressive. I discovered that when he bit a neighbor. (And I did the right thing and paid her doctors bills. I also make sure that my pets have all the necessary inoculations to prevent the spread of disease.)

Quagmire has also bitten me and Dear Husband more than once. Usually blood isn’t involved, but not always. I’m not going to lie. It does hurt.

Some people have encouraged me to euthanize Quagmire because of this. Instead, I choose to take the occasional risk, knowing that dachshunds have one of the weakest bite forces of any breed. In addition, Quagmire is an old, 15-pound dog who is missing more than half his teeth, and is therefore not capable of killing us.

However, it’s my responsibility to make sure he can never bite a visitor again. We keep him in our house. We don’t take him to public places. Our back yard is completely and utterly dog-proofed. And if we do have visitors, we have a soft muzzle on hand that we can put on him, which basically causes him to stand still and stare balefully at us.

Quagmire will never kill anyone. And he’ll never hurt anyone who hasn’t volunteered for such treatment (and that’s a short list). I feel we’ve done our due diligence.

In contrast, in the course of my life, I’ve been lunged at by several pit bulls whose owners were walking them on leash on busy urban sidewalks, and I’m sure those owners think that their dogs wouldn’t hurt a fly. That’s not responsible pet ownership.

But one pit bull encounter, in particular, stands out for me. I was in a convenience store, prepaying for gas. There was a van parked right at the front door, and I had to walk past it to get to the pump. I wasn’t paying much attention. I certainly didn’t hear any barking. There was no one in the driver’s seat, and the window was wide open. As I walked past, a pit bull came through that window and lunged at my face. I saw it all in slow motion. I felt his hot breath on my eyelashes. I was able to jump out of the way in time, but it was a near thing. I could have been disfigured for life.

And here’s the kicker: the pit bull owner came running out of the store and started yelling at me.

Are you wondering what to bring to Thanksgiving dinner? How about my book, Notes on Gratitude? Place your orders now! (Or any other time, since we’re on the subject.) And… thanks!

Random Memories from Childhood and What They Taught Me

Children are very impressionable.

Children are very impressionable. A flip, sarcastic remark may become a life lesson for them, rightly or wrongly. Here are some lessons that I learned growing up. Some I have worked very hard to unlearn.

I had taken a magic marker and doodled “bad” words on my white Keds. Given my age, around 5, they were probably shockers like, “poopy head” and the like. My mother wasn’t thrilled, though. But she hated confrontation. We went to the grocery store and I was wearing them. After we had loaded the groceries into the trunk, I was getting into the back seat and one of my shoes fell off in the parking lot. I said, “Hold on, Mom! My shoe fell out of the car!” She sped away, saying we were in too much of a hurry to go back, and that there were other cars in the parking lot wanting her to move. Lesson: Adults can lie when it suits their purposes.

We were trailer camping, and the camp manager came up and told us to stay inside, as a man had broken out of a nearby prison. We heard helicopters and saw flashlights in the distant woods. But I had brought no toys or books (I was about 7) and after about an hour I got really bored, and I begged my mother to let me at least go outside and sit at the picnic table. She let me, because she got tired of my whining (which from my adult perspective was a horrible solution), and I went out there and sat in the dark. Then I saw a man walking toward me out of the fog. So I got up, went to the trailer’s screen door, and it was LOCKED. I didn’t want to yell for my mother, because I was afraid I’d draw the man’s attention. So I stage whispered, “Mom, let me in!” and scratched at the door. She was sitting right there, lost in her book. I could see her. She had to have heard me. She was just annoyed that I had been such a pain earlier. “Mom!” I was convinced I was about to be killed or taken hostage. Then the guy walked up behind me and said, “Ma’am, you should keep your daughter inside.” She let me in. I have never been so scared in all my life. And I also learned that my mother was indifferent to my needs at the best of times. I pretty much had to raise myself. When I look back at some of the emotionally neglectful and/or downright irresponsible things she did to me as a child, I’m horrified and disgusted. And kind of proud that I survived.

A teenaged boy, at the swimming pool, once put his hand on my head and pushed my ten-year-old self under the water and locked his elbow while I underwater screamed and struggled. If he hadn’t let me up, I would have drowned. I ran home and told my mother, and she didn’t take it seriously. I learned two things from that one. If a guy wants to kill you, you’ll be dead. And when the sh** hits the fan in my life, I’d be on my own.

When, at age 13, I finally told my mother that my stepfather had been sexually abusing me, she said, “You’re making too much of it.” Lesson: My safety mattered to no one but myself, and grown ups live in convenient little fantasy worlds and can’t be counted on.

My mother had gotten herself a brand new aluminum cake cover. I noticed that if you held it by the handle on top and thumped it, it made an amazing “bong” sound. I was 8, and was also experimenting with my cassette recorder. She wasn’t home, so I decided to record a home cake cover concert. When she returned, I proudly played the recording for her. When she discovered my instrument of choice, she went into the pantry to find her cake cover covered in dents. I had been enjoying the sound so much I hadn’t even noticed the results. Lesson: Not everyone finds joy in the same ways that you do. (And also that when I’m in the zone, everything else tends to fade away. That’s still true to this day.)

My sister, twisting a half a grapefruit in my face and laughing as I screamed and cried. From that I got that my sister (who was 9 years older) genuinely did not like me at all, to the point of taking delight in my humiliation, so I must not be likeable. (She likes me now, and always loved me. But I struggle to feel liked by anyone to this day, and while this incident wasn’t the primary reason for that, I’m sure it didn’t help.)

My other sister, 10 years older than me, got chronic kidney infections. One day she looked at me and said she may have to take one of my kidneys someday. I was 8. It made me feel as though I had no autonomy, even over my own body. (And let’s face it. As a woman, I still feel that way quite often.)

A more lighthearted one. I was sitting in the kitchen with my stepfather. There were about 3 flies buzzing around. He told me he’d give me a nickel for every fly I swatted. So I propped open the door and let in more flies. From this I learned that it pays to think outside of the box.

Lessons can come at you from all directions. They may not always be the right ones, unfortunately. You, too, are teaching, even when you don’t realize it. So it’s important to be thoughtful with your words, kind with your deeds, and make sure everyone feels safe and heard. Anything less can cause a lifetime of destruction.

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What’s Your Idea of Safety?

What does it look like? How does it smell, feel, and sound?

I heard an interesting discussion on NPR recently. A man was conducting a seminar, and he asked his audience to close their eyes and imagine what safety looks like. How does it smell, feel, and sound? Audience members were then asked to share their thoughts.

Someone said safety was making waffles on a Saturday morning for his kids. The smell of the melting butter. The sounds of the kids chattering away while sitting on stools at the kitchen counter.

Other people might think of safety as their warm bed, with its weighted blanket. The room is dimly lit. Everything is quiet.

It could be lying in your husband’s arms in a hammock. The smell of his aftershave. The sound of his snore.

Safety might be listening to Motown music during a backyard bar-b-cue with friends. The sound of burgers sizzling on the grill. The sun on your shoulders.

It might be lying in a field and gazing up at the stars. That feeling of the planet cradling you as it moves through space. Crickets chirping.

I’d probably say it was spooning with my dog. His warm, furry little body against mine. That moment when the day is done and you get to drift off to sleep.

The interesting thing is that the man was conducting his seminar with police officers. They had a variety of responses, along the lines of the above. After they shared, he said (I’m paraphrasing here), “Isn’t it interesting that none of you said that safety was being with a police officer? And most people, regardless of their occupation, wouldn’t think of a police officer when answering this question. Why is that?”

That’s a very good question. Police officers are supposed to be there to ensure the safety of the public. Yet at some point many of them started viewing us as the enemy, and we have responded in kind. Why? Until we can answer that question, we can’t fix things.

Just something to think about while you make your waffles.

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At Least I Sometimes Feel Safe

There’s always an oasis somewhere, if I need one.

Believe it or not, I’m glad that things are so racially tense right now. It means that those of us who have been lucky enough to feel comfortable are being forced to look at the awkward bits of life. We can no longer rest as easy in our white privilege. We’re forced to walk in other people’s shoes, at least for brief periods of time.

Have you ever thought about what it might feel like to never feel safe, ever? I mean, I have issues due to past trauma that cause me to feel unsafe much of the time. But even then, I can usually find a place where I can shut the door and make all the monsters go away. I can pull the blankets over my head and rest. I know I can find an oasis somewhere, if I desperately need one. Many people are not that lucky.

Once again, I’ve found a past blog post of mine that deals with this very subject. I hope you’ll read it. It’s entitled, “Be safe going home.”

Let me know what you think.

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Tag: safety