When I was a kid
growing up in the sixties in the Bronx there was never any fear of being
molested or abducted. We’d leave the house and disappear for hours and our
parents never worried. There was no reason to. People watched out for each
other. If you got out of line some parent would drag you home by the ear and
tell your Mom what you’d done.
Your mother
would politely thank him/her for bringing your transgressions to her attention,
then once your accuser was out of earshot, she’d beat the crap out of you. Not
only for whatever stupid thing you did, but for making her look like a bad
parent.
“You little
bastid!” she’d bellow as she knocked you around.
Fortunately that
rarely happened to me. But one thing
happened back then, that if it occurred today, would cause all kinds of
problems.
Back in those
days we had air raid drills because things between us and the Soviets were
pretty intense. They’d announce on TV that an air raid drill would occur at a
certain time and everyone was to get off the streets.
For a kid, that
got old fast. I wasn’t going to sit in the house on a beautiful day just
because sirens were going off.
So I snuck out
of the house.
I had gone down
the block looking for something to do when this old guy called out from his
window. “Hey kid! Don’t you know enough to get off the streets during the air
raid drills?”
I waved him off.
But he
persisted. “Get up here right now!” he shouted. “You wanna get dragged off by
the cops?”
That struck a
chord. I hadn’t considered being ‘dragged off by the cops’. My grandfather was
a cop and had warned me to ‘stay on the straight and narrow’ because if I
didn’t, the cops would drag me downtown and…” It was at this point he’d give
this hard, knowing look and say, …“They would straighten me out.”
From the sound
of it I sure as hell didn’t want to get straightened out. I was just a kid,
five or six at the time. So I went into the guy’s house.
And you know
what happened?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The old guy was
in a wheelchair. Had some kind of muscular disease but other than that he was just
a guy. He directed me to the kitchen table and once I got settled, he brought
over cookies and explained why it was necessary to stay off the streets during
the drills. He asked if I knew how to play any games. I said I could play both
checkers and chess as my uncle had taught me, so he brought out a board and we
played a game or two.
I got to know
the old guy pretty well in the two or so years that followed. His name was
Ralph, he had been in World War 1, held the same job for decades until his
illness forced his retirement. I met his
wife and saw pictures of his kids who lived in another state. I’d drop by and
hang out whenever I was bored or wanted somebody to talk to.
Another time, at
around the same age, I had fallen off my bike and gotten a deep cut above my
eyebrow. I was scared to death when I saw all the blood. Fortunately, some
passing guy saw me, pulled me up onto his shoulders and said, “Where do you
live, kid?” I told him and he ran to my house and turned me over to my father.
That doesn’t
happen these days.
Nowadays there
are preditors behind every corner. I’ll give an example. I was walking into
church a little while ago and saw this 3 year old kid sprint out the door and
toward the street. I immediately spun to go after him then realized
(fortunately) that if I grabbed the kid just before he ran into the street and
at the same time his parents exited the church looking for him, it would appear
as if I was running off with their kid.
I saw a teen
girl heading toward the church and called out for her to stop him.
She did and
grabbed him just as he was about to run into traffic.
Immediately
afterward the parents charged out of the church looking for their child and saw
the teen walking toward them with the little guy in her arms.
The parents were
relieved, the teen was a hero. However, if the parents had come out and seen
the kid in my arms you can bet I’d have been hauled off in handcuffs.
What happened to
us? How did we get here? When did it become necessary to ask oneself “How does
this look?” before taking action to help?
Sorry for taking
so long between posts but I’m updating and revising Ari Publishing’s Facebook
page. There will be a lot of big changes and I’m hoping you’ll stop by when I
roll it out.
In the meantime
the Noon Revolution is going stronger than ever now that Noon 2: The
Resurgence has been released. Check out the original video that started it all
here:
