I think (hope?) **Loach ** is the exception rather than the rule. In fact, I suspect that given his career, he’s become so used to seeing the worst in society his natural instinct is to be suspicious rather than give people the benefit of the doubt.
Oh, and Iceland I don’t think anyone’s playing your game…
May I put this in my sig? Pleeeaaasee…
Because I objected to people vilifying the mother? Not sure why I should be. Yes she overreacted but possibly for good reasons. Or maybe because she’s a bitch. I don’t know and I am not willing to make her into an ogress (sorry) because of her actions.
Jim I think interacting with the children of your friends and neighbors is a completely different circumstance than what we are talking about here.
Iceland if I remember correctly you asked in a previous thread for someone to tell you when your Aspergers (sp?) is kicking in? Insinuating that 11 year olds aren’t safe around you may be interpreted in a way you don’t want. I didn’t hit the ! because I’ll take you at your word that sometimes you say things in ways you regret later.
I think the mother over-reacted, but here’s my response to anything like the “Can we listen to you play” from the kid:
(loudly enough to be heard by bystanders)“Sure, you can listen to me play if it’s okay with your mother.”
And for the record, I’m female, but I do that anyway, just because of the paranoia level in the world.
No, because of this:
I personally don’t think that seeing a bloke talking to a girl is, by default, a suspicious activity. I think - and hope - that most people don’t either. You clearly do, and I was just suggesting that your line of work might make you more inclined to see ill where none is intended than others might. For example, just because child molesters you’ve seen are men who start their interactions through small-talk doesn’t mean that all men who make small-talk with children are child molesters.
It wasn’t a criticism, it was an observation.
hubba…
you can come serenade me any time=)
/em wanders off wondering what mrAru did with my Brubeck’s 5 easy pieces disc…
Lets see if I can formulate my thoughts. My Websters define suspicion as “the act of suspecting something or someone esp something wrong without sufficient evidence or proof”. Seeing a strange adult male speaking with my 11 year old daughter may cause me to have a suspicion, a thought without proof. Unless the guys creepiness factor was high, this wouldn’t cause a melt down with me but would cause me to be more wary of the person. I hope it would cause every parent to be wary and watchful, that doesn’t mean you should be paranoid.
Now I will give my unsubstantiated wild ass guess. I picture the girl as someone who is trying to find her boundries and has a feeling of invincibility that the young sometimes have. She tends to talk to strangers and is starting to gravitate towards the “bad boys”. She has snuck out of the house a few times to be with friends she has been forbiden to see. At the mall she tends to wander off and get lost. Of course she sees nothing wrong with any of this. Mom has been trying to get her girl safe but is fighting a losing battle. Ogre became a casualty in the latest battle in a long war.
I don’t mean it in a platonic sense. He’s quite a cutie, especially in that first picture he posted. You ever switch teams, you let me know, okay?
Personally, I’m impressed that he’s got a cat named Euronymous.
Very cute kitty it is. 
My take on the situation is that the mother displaced some of her anger on Ogre by way of the stare. If she really reflected on the situation and her feelings, she may find that she was actually mad at the girls for walking up and talking to a complete stranger. Actually, she I’m sure she gave them an earful once they were in a less puclic place.
Also, if the girls were unsupervised, that is nobody fault except the person who brought them to the store. I don’t really consider letting them wander away within the same store for a couple of minutes to be unsupervised, though. You don’t need to watch 11-year-olds every second to supervise them.
Nobody was hitting on anyone in this story, but it seems a perfect example of adolescents practicing skills that are called “flirting.”
I’ll agree that the state of the community is in ruin, but not for the reasons you gave. From everything I’ve read, the rate of perverts and deviants is no higher than it ever has been. However, whenever one of them gets caught, there are 100 channels and a few hundred thousand websites that start screaming about the sky falling. Think of the kidnapping of children by strangers. The rates are not out of the range they’ve always been in, but you wouldn’t know that by the type of news coverage we get. The biggest problem is that people swallow what the news is feeding them with very little critical thinking or investigation into the actual facts.
Speaking to each other makes us safer in our communities, by the way. When nobody knows anything about everyone else, you don’t know who the bad people are. When everyone speaks to each other, you find out pretty quickly who to stay away from.
Maybe “normal” women. I’m trying to convince my child he should be fabulous like Carson so he could teach me how to wear anything but jeans. He is trying to convince me to shut up.
Damn hamsters ate another one. Let me see I remembered what I said.
Maybe living in the most densely populated state changes my perspective. In my state a small percentage of the population is still a shit load of people. I also know how many convicted sex offenders are in the town I live in. If I extrapolate that to the entire area I live in it becomes troublesome.
Please explain. Have I missed something? 
This is the way I’m reading it as well. With all due respect, Loach, you may not be the most objective person to judge the situation. Because of your profession, you are familiar with the worst-possible-case scenario.
And SolGrundy, Aruvqan, and Homebrew, you’re very kind. Thank you so much.
Oh, and my cat’s name is Euronymous because I had to run three black-metal transvestites off who were chasing her through traffic on a city street. I had to do something to honor her origins.
Most people just go to the cat shelter to get one…