Yep. In school we learned a little chant about crossing streets, and we were raised with a healthy wariness of strangers. Then we were released into the wild, and told to be home before the street lights came on.

It's a measure of how effectively we have been driven into unreasoning fear.

MSNBC has a TV show called, "Caught on Camera". A poor, poor substitute for YouTube's gazillion "fail!" videos, it still illustrates this nicely: the amateur videographer breathlessly claims the hailstorm is "like Armageddon!" - and the aftermath is "a war zone". Dude, it was a hailstorm, that's all. Evidently you've never seen what armies really do to towns.

I went 7.5 miles one way, either walking or on a city bus through not the best neighborhoods in Detroit to go to high school. When the weather permitted I usually walked and kept the bus money for myself. Got shot at three times, jumped several times and had knives pulled on me a couple times, all in 4 years. The little cotton-swaddled darlings AND their helicopter parents would have been killed and eaten back in the hood. Instead they will end up hanging themselves because they got a boo-boo and nobody was there to kiss it and I find it harder to care everyday. Must be getting old and cynical.

Warhawke223,

Some of us were born old and cynical about stuff like that. And thats not a bad thing.

I walked 3 blocks to kindergarten including a shortcut through an alley (ok, it was a good neighborhood). By age 10 I was blocks from home climbing trees, playing sports, visiting friends. We would come home for lunch because we were hungry. In the evening my dad would blow a cow horn and we could hear that 2 blocks away and come home. This paranoia is insane except in the worst neighborhoods, especially when most child abductions are custody disputes.

I worry more that someone is going to call CPS or the police on me if my children are not 100% hovered over versus something horrible happening to them. Granted, the oldest of my four children is 3-1/2, so they don't get unsupervised play time to explore the neighborhood. I let them play on the swingset in our backyard unsupervised (it's fenced and I can see them through the windows) and there have been no real issues aside from a neighbor complaining that small children should never be left to play by themselves. I guess it's horrible of me to allow them the freedom of our backyard.

It's a measure of how effectively we have been driven into unreasoning fear.

It's more a measure of how formerly reasonable "stranger danger" general warnings have morphed into parents' all-consuming terror that everyone walking down the street might want to harm, abduct, sex up and kill their children.

A kid is far, far more statistically likely to be harmed, abducted, sexed up or killed by a close relative.

As someone who doesn't have kids, I can assure you "we" have not bought into all-consuming fear. Their parents have. We just live with the consequences.

"As someone who doesn't have kids, I can assure you "we" have not bought into all-consuming fear."

Well. Do you support the TSA? How about calling police as the first action in any dispute? Is that cop in school a good idea, necessary? What would you think if you saw a guy carrying a gun to his car?
Just checking. It's not just the handling of children which has some clamoring for airtight State security.

In my pre-teen and early teen years (11-15 years old), me and my friends rode our bikes everywhere when the weather was good. We rode to school; we rode to the mall, we rode to fast-food places, we rode to each other's houses. On Saturdays, unless there was a stickball game scheduled, I was gone on my bike all day.

I was a latchkey kid, only I didn't need a key. We lived in a second floor apartment. When I arrived home after school, I climbed up on the railing of our neighbor's apartment, and from there I grabbed onto the bottom of our balcony and pulled myself up. I then climbed on to our balcony and went in through the balcony door.

To BunnyGirl:

Maybe your neighbor is thinking of this scenario:

http://catalog.fborfw.com/indexid.php?q=2570&Submit=Search

And, for those who don't know, April manages to sneak out without permission later, when she's four, with very sad results, though not for her.

Well. Do you support the TSA? How about calling police as the first action in any dispute? Is that cop in school a good idea, necessary? What would you think if you saw a guy carrying a gun to his car?

No; no; up to the parents and they should pay for it if they deem it necessary; and it depends on the situation.