A Stranger Anxiety

By Gregory Keer

When we moved to our house two years ago, the creepy man next door introduced himself. Wearing soiled clothes, he explained that he was 51, out of work, and living with his sick mother. From then on, we never caught a glimpse of her. When we did see him, he was lugging a 12-pack of beer, followed by a snarling canine that showed signs of being in a ring with a pit bull named Lockjaw. In his yard, he let dog poop fester and weeds run amok. Black smoke with an acrid odor sometimes billowed from his chimney. Late at night, he burned a single, reddish light in his window. And a year ago, we finally saw Mother - being loaded into an ambulance, never to return.

He inspired visions of Psycho's Norman Bates or worse. So, we looked him up on the child predator list. He wasn't on it, but he still spooked us.

We had come to our neighborhood for the safe environment of sidewalks and many families with young children. Yet, we rarely leave our back yard, and freak out if one of the boys slips out the front door just to play with snails.

The neighborhood isn't the only place we maintain constant vigilance. We stay at birthday parties to make sure our kids don't get hurt. We yell like movie-of-the-week actors when our children momentarily disappear in supermarkets. We send them off to school by uttering the caution, "Be careful."

We're not alone in our paranoia. There are parents that wander malls with leashes on their kids. Some folks won't let their children on the Internet. Others hover next to their wee ones during music lessons, leery of the grandmotherly teacher.

A lot of this is the result of our awareness - courtesy of a media that whips our insecurity into a fine meringue - of child abductions, cyber predators and molestations perpetrated by adults we once dared to trust. Because of these crimes, we need to educate our kids about strangers and support laws that keep criminals far away.

But we must also not take this mistrust of society too far. As we try to keep our kids safe, many of us are also telling them the world is largely dangerous. Worse yet, we're conditioning them to believe they cannot survive without us.

I'm not suggesting that we toss our 3-year-olds outside and let them fend for themselves. No, that's what our parents did. After school, we'd get home, grab our Schwinns and play until dark. Our moms and dads didn't know exactly where we were or with whom. I remember getting into fights, falling off walls I climbed, and still getting home without major physical or psychological damage.