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I have an unpublished piece sitting on my hard drive about the fence I built around our front yard. It does a bit a pontificating about the great sorrow it caused me to put up the fence, being a westerner at heart I dislike fences, fences are what land barons use to keep people like me off their land, me turning around and building a fence... well, see...
But the thing is I have kids now, I need a fence to keep the rest of the world from interfering with my kids.
There's a common joke in our house that goes like this, I come inside to use the bathroom, pour another coffee or glass of wine, depending of the lime of day, leaving the girls outside, and Corrinne says, well hurry up, don't want someone calling DFAX.
It's funny because, well, people do. Things are only really funny when they're uncomfortably true.
And christ I hope no one is going to call defax, but then some lady in a suburu cruised by awful slow this morning, looking hard at the girls playing in the yard while I changed their brother inside, concelled but able to see her looking hard at the girls enjoying themselves. Could have been my imagination, but I admit, it freaks me out a little. It didn't help that she had a Suburu, the official car of the New England nanny state.
I know, you think I'm paranoid. Maybe. But hey a Maryland court actually found some parents were "responsible" for "unsubstantiated child neglect" for letting their kids walk outside, unsupervised.
Sure, sure, an abberation, one crazy cop calls the one crazy CPS in town and one crazy court, one crazy judge get together and pass judgement which lots of crazy in any comment thread related to it tends to think is okay. So basically at least 50 or so people, from CPS to the prosecutors, to the cops who actually said "bullets would fly" to well, about 65% of people on the internet apparently, agree that letting your children walk around "unsupervised" is "unsubstantiated child neglect". Paranoid eh? Okay.
It's true that thousands of kids are walking places alone in America right now and none of them are being arrested. Sure, statistically this is anomalous, but what bothers me is not that it happens, but that this is people's response to a percieved problem. No one helps out these children they just call the cops. And just about the last fucking thing I ever want in this world is to be around people who call cops.
Every time I pass through customs and into a new country all I can think is sweet jesus I made it out alive. fuck you america.
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