If you ever visit Little Rays of Sunshine Daycare, remember to walk fast, keep your head down, and don’t make eye contact—or else the three-year-olds will have sufficient time to exploit your fear. They like to ride tricycles over to the playground fence and give strange parents the stink eye. Walking past them, sometimes I feel like I ought to be carrying pepper spray, or at least a safety whistle.
Child 1: “Who’s that?”
Child 2: “He ain’t my dad.”
Child 3: “He ain’t my dad either.”
Child 2: “Hey, you, what’s your name?” (child rattles fence)
Me: (looking around, hoping child 2 is accosting someone else. Realizing he’s not, say name meekly): Umm, I’m Thomas’s dad.
Whatever happened to teaching children to fear strangers? I mean, stranger danger was so successfully programmed into my belief system that now I’m wary of talking to strange three-year-olds. And by the time I was the ripe old age of three, my shyness level had already exceeded that of most woodland creatures, excepting perhaps the sasquatch.
Apparently, most babies develop an innate sense of stranger danger at about six months old, after which they begin to look warily at unknown faces. But it’s up to parents to foster this burgeoning fear into a healthy phobia that will not only save their child from the kidnappers plaguing the neighborhood, but make their child an incredibly awkward adult.
“Don’t talk to strangers,” was the mantra of my childhood, and even now, I still hate trying to integrate myself in a group of strangers. I’ve tried many integration methods over the years. I’ve tried approaching with a mosey, spitting, and saying “howdy,” but that only works if you don’t spit on your shoe. I’ve tried the stealth approach in which I attempt to sidle up undetected and then act as if I’ve been there all along, but to some people that can be extremely alarming. I’ve tried the humorous approach, though the tripping-and-falling gag was purely by accident. Generally, my best method for introducing myself to strangers is to aim for the pity inclusion and employ endearing awkwardness.
Anyway, the more that I think about it, I’m glad the three-year-olds on tricycles have yet to be indoctrinated. It seems to me that “don’t talk to strangers” has an insidious suspicion baked into it. It teaches children to attribute nefarious and sinister motives to people who don’t look or talk like them. And if the current state of American society teaches us anything, it’s a civics lesson for what happens when opposing groups of people retreat to the comfort of echo chambers and thus never talk to strangers.
So true
The Master Gardeners require a Federal background check—apparently there are heaps of pedos among the 60+ lady crowds.
I guess we’ve really got to keep an eye on all those master gardeners lurking in the bushes 😉
Tell them to stop threatening you, or they could end up on a milk carton.
Between the “don’t talk to strangers” mantra and the missing children milk carton campaign, it’s a wonder I even leave the house.
I remember in my childhood of the 1960’s, we had countless movies and “filmstrips” about never getting into a car with strangers, and there were red hand symbols posted on the houses that were designated as safe places to go if you felt in danger. In reality, I have read that kids are much more in danger of family members and acquaintances than strangers. I think those early public service messages make a big impact on kids. Maybe they could be used to encourage trust as well?
Yeah, I agree. It’s kind of like shark attacks. Every summer the media will go on a frenzy about some body getting bitten by a shark, but every year double the amount die from cow accidents than shark attacks, but when was the last time we saw the news reporting a farmer who got trampled by a bull.
One must (should) love it when humor manufactures and delivers wisdom to your doorstep. What the paziezootchkie am I talking about? Lookit rie cheer, buckkos. We teach the honorable lesson and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. Then the audience recites it back to us… Oh, no! That’s not what we meant… Good job, Sane, good job!
Thanks! I’m going to have to remember paziezootchkie.
One time I mistook a stranger for an acquaintance and approached him as if we’d already known each other. I just launched right into a conversation with all the relaxation and vocal intonations of longtime familiarity. Sometime during this I realized with embarrassment that I had in fact never met this individual, but by then it was too late. I accidentally made a friend. Whoops.
That’s funny. Maybe I should work the ole “pretend-like-you-know-them strategy” into my repertoire. It sounds like it was pretty effective.
Well written and humorous
Thanks for the kind comment!