Actually it’s the opposite - it’s the fact that I usually AM (generally) nice and open and available to people that concerns me. I know I’m too trusting. So I work hard to keep the overall circumstances safe.
Comes from my Dad, too - he was a construction manager, and usually in charge of safety on the jobsite. He’s seen a few deaths. Some from falls, guys will climb ladders and not realize the top part isn’t attached to anything. One guy was backed over by a steamroller, my dad looked under (somebody had to be responsible for looking to see if he’d survived) and saw this mangled man trying to pick himself up, witnessed the light going out in his eyes.
My dad carries a fire extinguisher in his car because one morning on the way to work he saw people die in a car that was on fire.
I used to carry a fire extinguisher in my car, until the time it got under my seat the wrong way and when I scooted it went WHOOOOOOSH and a big yellow cloud filled the backseat.
Have you considered building a moat? Pots of oil that can be ignited at a moment’s notice and emptied from the battlements (you do have battlements, don’t you?) are an extra measure of security.
And shame, shame, upon those of you who are trashing fessie for stalkerish obsession. Won’t someone think of the children??!?
I have a child molestor who targets boys my son’s age living 207 yards from my apartment.
So don’t give me the “oh if you had children you’d understand” crap, okay?
My local sex offender is on the next block, not in the next house, but he’s a MUCH greater threat to my child.
I’m glad I have this information. I’m glad the sex offender registry exists.
Am I freaking out about it? No.
Am I doing anything about it? No. I take ordinary precautions with regard to my son’s safety. I know what the two molestors look like and I know their names, so if we should run into them (and I actually recognize them) I’ll make sure to steer clear.
Fessie, your response to this situation is entirely irrational.
And I find it hard to believe that your neighborhood was oh-so-perfect before these people moved in. And if it was…well, frankly, I’m glad that they did move in. Because you and all your neighbors really need to be smacked upside the head with a clue-by-four. This is real life, sister. Deal with it.
ETA: I just looked on google maps to get the 207 yard figure, by the way. It’s not like I knew that before I made this post.
How can you stay there? There is NO way I’d live there. No way.
So when you read about the 6-yr-old boy who was raped and murdered by the pedos next door in Florida, did you just think “Oh, that was an unfortunate bit of random bad luck”? Because I sure didn’t. I thought it was tragic and awful, and that victim’s parents should’ve gotten the fuck away from those pedos next door.
There was a little part in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs that struck me as true - that we begin to covet by coveting what we see. zweisamkeit, I left out a thought. I left out that I was taught to anticipate and respond preemptively. To think ahead and KNOW where that steamroller is, KNOW that that ladder is attached. Because shit DOES happen.
My husband wants to buy a gun but I’m against it. Because I’m the one whose (carried just-in-case) fire extinguisher gets discharged by accident.
I hear your chorus, though, and will think about my paranoia, about the assumptions I’m making.
I’m sure some of your points are valid.
Here’s another way to look at it that might help calm your nerves, Fessie. Generally, people don’t shit where they eat. A 10-year-old might steal a bike from the house two doors down, but an adult is going to go farther away to burgle a house. The people in the next town over might need to worry about your neighbor, but you don’t. You only have to worry about the criminals from the next town over.
And she’s a bad mother. We could all take a lesson from self appointed Mother of the Century, fessie, whose helicopter parenting and paranoia are certain to turn out well adjusted, fearless, self sufficient children. Just as soon as she gets that plastic bubble installed over her house to keep out germs, undesirables, and alien mind control rays, her status as undisputed uber-parent will be assured.
Like others else said, felons have to live somewhere. Places that have restrictions like “no sex offenders living within X yards of a school/preschool/etc” actually work to drive them into quiet, secluded neighborhoods like yours, fessie, because there’s no school built there.
Like I said in the other thread, I rent a house in an extremely well-to-do suburb of Chicago. There are two convicted “sexual predators” (defined in Illinois as violent, preying on children, and/or repeat sexual offenders) in this zip code, and a third sex offender (older adult who was with a teen) living only a few blocks from me. One of the quietest suburbs you could hope to live in, good public and private schools, extremely low crime, easily accessible public transit.
I sympathize. Your situation sucks. You, like countless others across this nation, just got stuck with a really skeevy neighbor.
Because most people can’t pick up and move every time someone objectionable wanders into their line of sight. Or perhaps they realize the futility of trying, since the world is pretty much chock-full of people who are objectionable in one way or another.
I lived across the street from an RSO for years. An RSO who **did **target children, and who had a cute dog that he walked twice a day. My daughter already knew the rules of “don’t leave the yard without telling me, don’t talk to strangers” etc., so it really wasn’t that hard to add “And don’t speak to the man across the street. I don’t care how cute the dog is, stay away. He’s not a nice man, and he does bad things to kids.”
The world is what it is, and part of parenting is teaching your child to function in the world as it is. You simply *can’t *remove children from every danger, so you supervise them when they’re little, and teach them how to protect themselves as they get older. You buy outlet covers, you don’t shut off the electricity.
My next door neighbor is a RSO, for some naughty he did with his teenage stepdaughter. I have absolutely no fear of him or what he may do, he is still a redneck jerk who burns garbage,and collect junkers but I know who he is, where he lives, where he works, and he knows I know and life goes on. There was also bank robber hiding out in a rental 6 doors down until SWAT descended on him. They never found the cash, it may be in our woods still.
The scariest thing that happened to me living in the sticks was walking in the woods with my daughter and friend when we were surprised by a bow hunter with a camcorder. He seemed to think we were on his land (NOT)so he filmed us while he scared the shit out of us with threats and hostile gestures. I should have reported his ass to the cops. Like I should have reported the delivery dude who had to take a piss so he comes screeching to the dead end where I live hops out and pissed out in the open right in front of me. That enraged me so much I wanted to beat his dick with a stick, but I didn’t think that to be prudent.
Point being, yeah you have an undesirable in your neighborhood, but at least that is one you can keep an eye on. When there are other degenerates cruising thru your community that you have no idea what their intentions really are, and you can’t do anything about it.
and pbbthand Dangerosa (my neighborhood isn’t priced above median BTW) and kayaker and needscoffee.