July 24, 2015
3:31 p.m.

Well, yesterday I went on a political rant, which was useless and probably not terribly accurate. In my defense--ME NOT POLITICAL.

I guess a lot of it stems from my growing frustration with life in the 2000's. Nothing is as it was when I was growing up, and the changes have not been for the better, in my opinion.

I live in a small suburb of a large city, and one would hope that the relative population difference between the actual city and the outlying suburbs would make it a safer place to live, but that's not the case.

I've lived here for over ten years, and my neighborhood seems relatively quiet, but I do not let my grandchildren outside to play unsupervised. There's a pool at the clubhouse, but I would never let them walk over there without an adult. Funnily enough, when all the children were here visiting last week, their mothers (my daughters) made them all wait to swim when they'd be accompanied by parents, and the oldest grandchild is sixteen! She drives, but can't go to my pool alone! And I salute my daughters for this. Because terrible world.

I have received e-mail notifications that there are sexual predators living within a five mile radius of my home. I have twice called neighborhood watch to report a suspicious white van. (It's amazing to me how the quintessential "white van" has become, in my mind, synonymous with "kidnapper". Unless it is clearly marked with recognizable company logos--and especially if there are no back windows--it is "suspicious". I don't care if the neighborhood watch thinks I'm crazy, white vans driving aimlessly around my neighborhood where children are playing are going to get reported!)

I am barely acquainted with my nearest neighbors, and have made no real effort to change that. (Neither have they.) I remember my parent's neighbors coming to the house for coffee and a visit. None of my neighbors have ever set foot inside my house, nor I in theirs. The world has moved on since my childhood, and not in a good way.

I've written in the past about one of my neighbors who collapsed in the street last fall. I was able to help her, with the help of the Call-N-Ride driver who came to take me to physical therapy, yet to this day we only say hello to one another and inquire about each other's health. No visits over coffee--I usually see her smoking outside while her dogs do their business and I'm checking my mail. Kinda sad, isn't it?

Honestly, I'm not an anti-social person. I don't think. Well, maybe a little. I'm content with a few good friends and my family. But it does seem that not just I, but many of the people I meet now have only a casual acquaintanceship with the people who live nearest to us. I remember growing up and knowing everyone on the street, first and last names! I actually know the first names of two neighbors. I haven't a clue about any of the others.

I know the park manager's first and last name--does that count? I mean, we are actually friends. But she doesn't live very near me.

Anyway, I think that neighbors are no longer friendly because people just don't trust each other as much as they used to. People move more often. People spend more time away from home. And as small a suburb as it is, it's still part of a big city, where people prefer to look at the ground as they pass you on the street rather than smile and say "Hi".

Maybe it's because I grew up in a small town. Maybe city people never give it a thought that their own neighbors are strangers. And even small town folks no longer feel comfortable letting their children out of their sight. I miss "neighboring", and yet I seem to have no real desire to pursue it now. I've become citified.

Whatever it is that's become of us in the twenty-first century, it's not  good for us. We live in a country where it's not even safe to take your family to a movie. We're afraid of terrorists, but even more afraid of the ice cream man.

So ranting about poor government may have been a way to address a bigger problem. Humanity has become a mess, in general.

No wonder I'm afraid to turn on the news. We had a theater shooting here in the Denver area. The offender was just convicted after weeks of deliberation. Yesterday, two young woman were shot in a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. Copy cat? Who knows? People are a mess!

No one can say or do anything without offending someone. I'm offended by all the people who claim to be offended by things that aren't really offensive except to those who are seeking to be offended by everything. Those are the people who decide to take a gun and get back at all the people who supposedly offended them by killing other people who had nothing to do with any of those alleged offenses.

Like I said, a mess.

I think I'll go crawl in bed with a book and forget that I ever started this. If I'm lucky I'll find something set in the 1940's when people still knew their neighbors and were able to let their children go off and play for hours without worrying that some kook with a white van might be stalking them.

Hopefully, I won't go to sleep. My thinks for today are kind of nightmare-inducing.

Blah.

Good evening.