Nuiloa
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- May 12, 2011
- Messages
- 496
Paranoia struck me out of the blue on Saturday.
I was out geocaching in a local park and was heading up a trail to go put the cache back in its hole. Just then a little girl came around the corner on her bike, stopped dead and had a funny look on her face. I thought she looked scared. She then spun around and I heard her yelling for her dad.
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.
I was mad at myself for succumbing to the paranoia that makes completely innocent people feel the need to protect themselves against accusations of crime. Shades of the Salem Witch Trials.
I also realized I'm at the age when I remember that an adult could talk to a kid without feeling guilty. And that a kid would talk to an adult with respect. I can understand why they've lost respect, if they are bombarded day in and day out by people telling them that all strangers are pervs.
It turns out that the kid and her dad were the geocache owners and the funny look on her face was excitement that someone had found their cache. (He emailed me later to say he was sorry they hadn't met me).
I'm going to talk to the next kid I see and let the chips fall where they may. Can someone agree to bail me out
I was out geocaching in a local park and was heading up a trail to go put the cache back in its hole. Just then a little girl came around the corner on her bike, stopped dead and had a funny look on her face. I thought she looked scared. She then spun around and I heard her yelling for her dad.
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.
I was mad at myself for succumbing to the paranoia that makes completely innocent people feel the need to protect themselves against accusations of crime. Shades of the Salem Witch Trials.
I also realized I'm at the age when I remember that an adult could talk to a kid without feeling guilty. And that a kid would talk to an adult with respect. I can understand why they've lost respect, if they are bombarded day in and day out by people telling them that all strangers are pervs.
It turns out that the kid and her dad were the geocache owners and the funny look on her face was excitement that someone had found their cache. (He emailed me later to say he was sorry they hadn't met me).
I'm going to talk to the next kid I see and let the chips fall where they may. Can someone agree to bail me out