Stranger Danger - societal paranoia

[TromboneAl]

Remember kids, don't take geocaches from strangers!

 

[Texas Proud]

I
I said something to one of the kids and he responded back... a couple of the others made a few remarks... then one of them said loudly to the others "STANGER DANGER"... I was a bit surprised at this and some responded to it by not talking... I told the others that I guess he was right and stopped talking to them.... QUOTE]

But that's the sad part. You felt the need to stop talking to them. Don't you find that a bit sad?

A bit, but I was enjoying the quiet prior to them coming so I really wanted them to go....

 

[FinanceDude]

Exactly how geezer guys feel when they're cutting through the department store at the mega-mall looking for the door where they came in from the parking lot and suddenly find themselves walking though the lingerie department........

I saunter through the lingerie department all the time, it is kind of a habit.........

 

[flyfishnevada]

We have a geocache near our home and I visit it occasionally when I'm out walking. I was surprised to find a picture of that cache on the website with an old guy standing naked in front of it. Of course his privates were blurred, but I guess he makes a habit of taking nude pictures at caches in the area. Kind of creepy, but we're out in the middle of nowhere and I'd be lying if I said DW and I have never shed our clothes when wandering around the hills.

 

[Nuiloa]

We have a geocache near our home and I visit it occasionally when I'm out walking. I was surprised to find a picture of that cache on the website with an old guy standing naked in front of it. Of course his privates were blurred, but I guess he makes a habit of taking nude pictures at caches in the area. Kind of creepy, but we're out in the middle of nowhere and I'd be lying if I said DW and I have never shed our clothes when wandering around the hills.

So those stories about Sasquatch are true?

 

[Nords]

Of course his privates were blurred,

I don't know what kind of mosquitoes you're growing out there, but that sounds very painful...

 

[haha]

I saunter through the lingerie department all the time, it is kind of a habit.........

Me too, especially at Nordstrom where both the sales people and the shoppers tend to be young, well dressed and pretty. Anyway, don't you guys buy lingerie for your sweeties?

Ha

 

[JPatrick]

I saunter through the lingerie department all the time, it is kind of a habit.........

I love watching people walk by the local Victoria's Secret..

Of course, they probably enjoy watching me too..

 

[ziggy29]

Interesting conversation in light of my most recent podcast listen from the grand folks at Freakonomics, called Where did all the hitch-hikers go?
It identifies well with this concept of stranger danger and how even though the number of people harmed by being hitchhikers or picking up hitchhikers was few, it was magnified by the fear we have of strangers.

My fear is less of strangers as it is what other people will think of me as a "stranger" in certain situations.

It's to the point where I absolutely, categorically, **refuse** to be alone with children without adult witnesses present -- and to the point where if a "strange" child starts getting close to me, I turn around and distance myself as much as I can. Last thing I need is for someone to call the police on me because I got "too close" to someone else's kid.

 

[Nuiloa]

My fear is less of strangers as it is what other people will think of me as a "stranger" in certain situations.

It's to the point where I absolutely, categorically, **refuse** to be alone with children without adult witnesses present -- and to the point where if a "strange" child starts getting close to me, I turn around and distance myself as much as I can. Last thing I need is for someone to call the police on me because I got "too close" to someone else's kid.

I understand exactly - which is one of the reasons I hightailed it out of there.

OTOH, kids needs to learn social skills and dealing with strangers is one of them. I'm getting pretty sick of hiring young people who are, at best, socially inept and, at worst, non-communicative to the point of catatonia.

All stats tell us that crime rates are down. So why do more and more of us feel like criminals for just doing stuff that comes naturally - like talking to a child.

 

[Texas Proud]

I understand exactly - which is one of the reasons I hightailed it out of there.

OTOH, kids needs to learn social skills and dealing with strangers is one of them. I'm getting pretty sick of hiring young people who are, at best, socially inept and, at worst, non-communicative to the point of catatonia.

All stats tell us that crime rates are down. So why do more and more of us feel like criminals for just doing stuff that comes naturally - like talking to a child.

I will give you a story that was a bit strange....

This was years ago, but still...

I was visiting my sister and we went to the park with her two kids, age 5 and 8... after being there for awhile we decided it was time to leave... my sister went up to the playground and yelled... 'LETS GO' to her kids... we started to walk....

About 300 yards later we turned around to see a 3 or 4yo boy walking as fast as he could to keep up with us.... we stopped and looked at each other to figure out what to do.... since I did not have kids, my sister said 'I have to take him back because he will get lost if we just send him back'... so, she took the boy's hand and walked him back and found his mother who had no idea he was missing...

I can see how someone who is shifty can talk a kid into doing something they would not want to do...

 

[veremchuka]

In a serious vein, there are some weirdos out there and some can be dangerous! I never ran into any but I am worried sometimes when alone in an isolated area.

Not too long ago I found myself in a very unusual situation and was having a very nice talk with a young girl, she was maybe 5 or 6. It struck me after a few minutes that this could be a dangerous situation for me. It's just her and me, what if she accused me of trying to harm her? What if an adult came and viewed this as something not on the up and up?

It's a shame to think this way but you can be putting yourself into a dangerous situation without realizing it. I ended the conversation at that point. All I need is some irate parent to call the cops and accuse me of something and then it's my word against theirs, I don't need that. I don't have any record of violence or criminal behavior but just the same I see this as a potentially dangerous situation.

 

[BigNick]

All stats tell us that crime rates are down. So why do more and more of us feel like criminals for just doing stuff that comes naturally - like talking to a child.

Because it's on TV.

I am a volunteer cache reviewer for Geocaching.com. As far as I know, there has never been a case of anyone being assaulted as a direct consequence of searching for a cache. People occasionally fall off cliffs, have car crashes driving to/from a cache, get questioned by law enforcement, etc, and I presume that occasionally someone gets mugged by chance - although a decent cache will not be placed in a bad part of town - but as someone pointed out above, placing a cache to stalk people is a very inefficient exercise.

Oh, and if anyone knows a better hobby than geocaching for younger retirees, I'd love to hear about it.

 

[chris2008]

Because it's on TV.

I agree: media coverage has a lot of impact on how people perceive situations.
Even though crime rates are fairly stable or going down and there has neither been an unsolved murder case in my area for many years nor many murder cases by random strangers at all the general understanding is that the risk of being murdered is much higher these days than ever before.

I am a member of a social organization servas.org where you can visit other members and sleep in their home. We have been visitors and hosts for several years and never had an unpleasant event. When talking about the organization to others, a lot of people are shocked that I would let strangers stay in our house, even though there is a small screening process for travellers.

On the other hand couch surfing and airbnb are new and very popular. This is encouraging.

 

[rescueme]

Anyway, don't you guys buy lingerie for your sweeties?

Ha

I did, until DW found out about it ...

 

[Bestwifeever]

I did, until DW found out about it ...

 

[GregLee]

I'm going to talk to the next kid I see and let the chips fall where they may.

But you'd be teaching the kid that it's okay to talk to strangers.

 

[ziggy29]

My first instinct was to get the heck out of there in case I was confronted as being some kind of pervert lurking in parks to endanger little children.

I'm an overweight woman who only poses a major threat to chairs, pepperoni pizzas and the occasional spider, yet I reacted like a criminal

The mere fact that you are female will probably eliminate 98% of the assumptions that you are a pervert.

 

[Nuiloa]

Because it's on TV.


Oh, and if anyone knows a better hobby than geocaching for younger retirees, I'd love to hear about it.

The only hobby I can think of that is better is sitting on a beach chair near a nice warm lake, with a good book and a cold beer. Not as much exercise but definitely at the top of my list.

Seriously - I won't walk just for the sake of walking. I find it boring. But... tell me to go look for a boxful of bubblegum machine trinkets in a bug-infested hole in a tree next to a mosquito-ridden swamp, and I'm your girl!

 

[Bestwifeever]

Pretty sure that most danger to children doesn't come from strangers but from family members including extended/blended, teachers, clergy, coaches, etc.--i.e., people who are not strangers. So talk away, Nu.

 

[Nuiloa]

But you'd be teaching the kid that it's okay to talk to strangers.

Because it IS okay to talk to strangers!

We're talking (sort of).

 

[MichaelB]

Pretty sure that most danger to children doesn't come from strangers but from family members including extended/blended, teachers, clergy, coaches, etc.--i.e., people who are not strangers. So talk away, Nu.

You're absolutely right, but children are still left alone with the dangerous ones and taught to fear (friendly) strangers.

 

[youbet]

So, send your grandkids out on the street to mingle with the crowds and meet new, interesting people. Keep them out of school, church, adult supervised clubs, etc., to protect them from the perverts.

 

[Bestwifeever]

Of course I'm not saying that, YouBet, but maybe also focus on nonstranger danger.

I don'[t think most kids today go out without a family member anyway.

 

[youbet]

Pretty sure that most danger to children doesn't come from strangers but from family members including extended/blended, teachers, clergy, coaches, etc.--i.e., people who are not strangers. So talk away, Nu.

How much of this is because the folks you mention are the folks the kiddies spend time with? If you decreased that time and added a lot of time with random strangers at random places (think joining the stranger in their car to "chat," etc.) might change that.

Since many parents do not allow young kiddies to spend much unsupervised time with strangers in seclusion, it follows there is not much opportunity for strangers to act questionably. We'd probably have to construct the experiment differently allowing equal opportunity for access by both strangers and known folks to draw any meaningful conclusions.

There's also the issue of what constitutes a "stranger.' We recently had a suburban cop arrested for child porn. Great. I tell the kids it's good to approach a uniformed officer if they are lost or have an issue. Then I find out the uniformed officer likes to ask the kids to show him their "thingy" while he takes pictures....

I agree that the "stranger - danger" thing is likely quite overblown, OTOH I admit if my grandyoungin's were playing hopscotch in the driveway and a car pulled up with the adult beginning a conversation, I'd probably drift on over to see what was up. Especially if the adult appeared to be offering them something or calling them closer to the car.