How Far Is It from Tuscon to Punjab?

There were about 30 emails on my office computer this morning.  About the Tuscon shooting.  And safety.  Although Congress wasn't in session today, there was a gathering on the east front for a moment of silence for the Arizona victims.

The Sergent at Arms and the Capitol Police sent information on personal safety that included how to avoid a terrorist roadblock while driving, how to avoid being boxed in while driving, and how to alert the police if someone acting abnormally comes into your office.  In addition to safety briefings, we were given hoods to be worn in case of chemical, biological, or nuclear attacks.  We received two one-way alert radios connected directly to the Capitol Police.  And two shelter-in-place packs the size of large carry-on bags.

Where do you draw the line between accessibility and safety?  Where do we set the gauges on any spectrum?  And whom do we trust? 

Salmaan Taseer couldn't even trust his own guard.

Truth or Consequences

You're all sworn to secrecy about what I'm going to tell you.  The reason for the secrecy is also the reason you're reading this here on Blogspot rather than on the MSN site.  My former blog is shuttered because of a stalker.  Bear with me in my cryptic ways of blogging.  It's for safety reasons.

Last month, after taking time away from the paid workforce to raise my children, I accepted a job with an incoming Member of C0ngress* from my home state.  One of my blogs described the journey to this job.  During the first week in the office, my boss was interviewed for one of the three major nightly news programs.  In the segment was a very quick shot of me at work at my desk while his press secretary stood beside my chair.  We were in the background as he was moving some things into the office.  It's around the ten minute mark in the video.

My apologies for not explicitly saying my boss's name or home state.  Please understand my need for a bit of privacy.  Even by posting the past few blogs, my fear is that someone can still piece together too much information.  Now for the consequences.

Please, please, please, if you have figured out all (even with my cryptic writing), keep it to yourself.  If my stalker ever discovers this site, it too will be taken down. 

*Purposefully typed wrong to throw off search engines.

Stoopid State Law

There are some pretty silly or downright stupid laws on the books. 

One college town has an ordinance against public drunkenness.  However, you can't be arrested for public drunkenness if you're wearing a morning suit.  My law school exploited that loophole by all of us renting tails for Homecoming while the third years provided trashcans full of fuzzy navels and two other drinks that for the life of me I can't remember what they were. 

My state has a stupid loophole on the books.  When I wanted to ride a motorcycle alongside Mr. Gaelic rather than sitting behind him, I took a class at the local community college.  It was a full day of classroom instruction followed by a written test.  Only if we passed the written test were we allowed out in the roped-off parking lot for the practical instruction.  For someone who had never driven a motorcycle it was fantastic, starting from the basics of how to turn it on.  The DMV driving test was the practical test given by the instructors.  We still had to go to the DMV for the written test.

The loophole in the law that I find stupid is that scooter riders don't have to take any special classes or pass any special tests before they can hop on a scooter.  Granted scooters don't have the horsepower of motorcycles.  But they still need to understand certain things about a motorized two-wheeled vehicle.

I think the law is stupid because, on a recent damp drizzly morning, we were following a scooter rider downhill on a major street.  It was early enough that the only traffic on the street was the scooter in front of us and our big SUV.  I saw the light changing to yellow and knew the scooter was going too fast to stop.  Sure enough, when he hit the brakes he braked with only the back brakes and started fishtailing.  He recovered but knew he couldn't stop and continued on through the intersection.  Thank goodness that the car which was stopped at the cross street didn't immediately start moving when the light turned green for them.  The scooter would have been toast.

Even a motorcyclist with a 250cc bike must pass the written and practical test.  Yet scooter riders are exempt, even though scooters are getting bigger and bigger, some maxi-scooter even up to 800cc's. 

Some things I just don't understand.

Dirts So Good

‘Tis better to have fallen and recovered than to never have fallen at all. That’s not right. ‘Tis better to not fall in the first place. At least if you’re on the downside of 40.

It all began with noticing just how dry the yard is. So after mowing, a quick dousing with the sprinkler should do the trick. I positioned the sprinkler to point down the side yard next to the driveway. After thirty minutes, it was time to reposition the sprinkler.

Not wanting to get wet, I decided to do an end-run around the spray of water as the sprinkler was pointing in the opposite direction. So I took off running in an arc toward the outside of the driveway.

You know how everyone says that when something bad happens it happens in slow motion? Well, that didn’t happen for me. My feet hit a slick spot on the rocks of the driveway and down I went, landing on all fours on the rocks. About that time, the sprinkler wooshed back around and soaked my entire side head to toe as I tried to erect myself quickly enough to avoid the water.

Mixed with the water dripping down my leg and arm, it looked like there was a cup of blood spurting from my knee and the heel of my palm. ‘Tis a good thing kneeling isn’t a required activity of my daily life.

Let's Go Fly a Light

Saturday mornings are meant for sleeping late, not being awoken with the phone ringing at 5:15 a.m. Our phone announced the incoming party’s name, the parents of our second daughter’s best friend. The friend wasn’t at home and the parents didn’t know where she was. The father called to find out if she was with our daughter. Which she wasn’t. First thought in my mind, “Oh, no, not another runaway!”

In the past month, my eldest daughter’s friend ran away from home. The police came to our house to interview both of the teenagers about if they knew of the girl’s whereabouts. Which they didn’t. The girl finally surfaced five days later at a friend’s house.

Just for the record, I’m a terrible mother, according to some of the comments I hear third-hand from parents of my daughters’ friends. Some of the terrible things I do:

*Allowing the kids to choose, once they’ve been confirmed, whether to go to church with us (unless they’re on the schedule to acolyte, in which case it’s non-negotiable)
*Allowing my middle daughter to wear shorts and skirts to school which the other parents think are too short
*Allowing my children to get their learner’s permits without tying the privilege to a certain level of grades
*Allowing my teenagers to take public transportation and/or walk all over the city to shop, eat, and watch movies
*Teaching my children at a young age about human reproduction
*Telling my young teenagers about oral sex
*Offering my children wine with meals at home and tastes of other alcoholic drinks when their father or I order them in a restaurant

But in my defense, my children

*Won’t have a resentful attitude about church as adults
*Will have a respect for alcohol and know their limits before getting to university and the “real world”
*Understand that sex is a normal part of life and, as girls, won’t allow a boy to insist on certain activities without a reciprocation on his part
*Call adults Mr. and Mrs. rather than by their first names as a sign of respect and the boundary between childhood and adulthood
*Know that our home is a haven, a safe-place, not only for them but for their friends as well

Once I insisted that my eldest daughter sit in on an adult education lecture at church. The lecturer was a young female chaplain from the local church-run school. She described the differences in parents by comparing us to tractor beams (à la Star Trek) or lighthouses.

Parents who insist that their children do and say and think and act the way the parent wants the child to are like tractor beams, pulling the child into them. This action is enough in drive the children away or to make the child rebel in ways harmful to the child. Not what we should be striving for.

But lighthouses weren’t designed to draw anyone TO them. If a ship goes TO the lighthouse, it crashes on the rocks. Lighthouses are designed to show ships the way to safety by keeping them away from danger. Parents should strive to show their children the dangers that exist and let the children go. My eldest daughter now refers to herself as the lighthouse to her friends. She’s proud of that fact, but understands that it’s a huge responsibility for someone her age.

Even though some parents may think I’m too lax with my rules, I know to pick my battles. I do have street cred with my children, as when I kept our eldest from going on an exchange program because she didn’t keep up her end of the bargain which was an improvement in her grades. (She’s now taking four AP classes and going on a different exchange trip.) And the middle daughter (who infamously was thrown out of the church children’s choir and was asked to leave the church youth group) knows what it’s like to live under house arrest. (The jury’s still out on whether she’s a lighthouse to her friends, but I suspect she might be heading that direction.) I’m just saving the big guns for the big infractions.

As for the friend whose parents woke us at an ungodly hour on Saturday, she is safe at home. I bet she’s grounded for life. And while I don’t want to cast allegations on the parents involved since they are friends of my husband’s and mine, rather than having a helicopter parent the girl needs a lighthouse parent.