Stop Being Afraid

Good morning Westsiders. :)

 

Judging by the comments, PM’s, emails, calls and personal visits I’ve been inundated with over the past several days I think one or two of you may be slightly interested in the latest news on what happened with the kids who let Mackie out of the dog yard.

 

Thankfully, I finally have some news.

 

Both of the kids came across the articles and my original post. Within 24hrs of my posting it, they had each sent me a written apology without being prompted. Each of them came forward, on their own, and accepted responsibility for their actions.

 

I subsequently met with each of their families and arranged for the kids to perform 50 hours of community service. A couple hours a day, after school. The primary focus of their community service will be on upgrading the dog yard. They will be hanging out with the dog often while doing their work.

 

At the end of their assigned hours, provided they follow the rules, don’t do anything stupid, etc then they are done. A punishment proportionate to the offence, their debt to civility repaid, they will each be given a free membership to the Group. If they wish to continue their experience here and continue learning things and exploring, they are welcome to do so. In meeting with their families all of them were very impressed with the facility and I expect to be meeting a whole new community of new members in the coming weeks as word spreads about the Group though their friends. We have a lot to offer each other.

 

There will be no charges filed. At no point in this have I had to involve the police. We handled this, you and me, together, as a community. Because of that we did not need to set in motion a chain of events that neither of us could control, neither of us could stop, and would have ended in nothing but a huge waste of time, money, and opportunity for those kids and their families.

 

The lesson here is not just for the teenagers.

 

The lesson here, is for you.

 

The police are not a substitute for parenting and community.

 

There are times to call the police, certainly. They serve an essential service to our community. But those times are, thankfully, very few and far between for the majority of us. Many of us should realistically be able to go our entire lives having never once dealt with them in the line of duty.

 

That’s the point.

 

I have a scanner in my office and I listen to the “ultimate local news” of the police radios every day. I’ve done this for years, and I’ve learned several very important things. The most striking one is the overwhelming amount of time the police are forced to spend dealing with profoundly stupid people, trustees of modern chemistry, and people with a complete and total lack of class that has been replaced with a wholly undeserved sense of entitlement.

 

And on top of that they have entitled little brats, political tourists who have just discovered facial hair and have never known real fear, or a real fight, calling them Pig. I do not know that I would have the emotional patience to do that job for even a week and resist the urge to take their teeth out with a flashlight, and yet I watch cops suffer this every day.

 

We live in a society where “adults” use the phrase “I’m calling the police!” with the exact same intonation and invective as a whiny child screaming “I’M GONNA TELL MOOOOOOOOOM!”.

 

This disgusts me. That is not what the police are for.

 

You call the police when the problem is too big for you to solve, when you are overwhelmed. That’s what they’re for. When you can’t stop the bleeding, when the guns come out and things get loud, when the house is on fire.

 

When an actual crime has been committed and there is imminent danger of loss of life or real property, you call the police.

 

When you need somebody RIGHT NOW to legitimately be a hero and save your ass, you call the police.

 

But for the vast, overwhelming huge percentage of the situations you are going to face in your day to day life, all of us need to grow the hell up and learn to take responsibilities for our own actions. 

 

We need to take responsibility for our own communities.

 

We need to take responsibility for our own parenting.

 

Because when we don’t, the only way the police, the state, knows how to replace parenting starts with putting our kids in an orange jumpsuit.

 

And we are better than this. We can, we must, be better than this.

 

It’s easy to see a kid do something stupid and call the cops. And yes, there is a level of offence, there is a level of stupid where that is the only responsible option. If you walk down the street and see a kid pull a gun on someone, you call the cops. They have body armor and the training to put themselves in danger to handle that situation. They exist so that you don’t have to put yourself in imminent danger to solve a situation that you are not equipped to deal with.

 

But if you walk down the street and see a kid kick a puppy, you put a size-10 bootprint square in his ass and start a conversation. That is a “teachable moment”. You don’t need the police for that, you need to stop being afraid to talk to people.

 

When you see a little kid run out into the street at full speed you don’t shake your head and mutter “some people’s kids”. You march out there, you stop the traffic, you grab that kid and march him right to his front porch and hand him over to his mom. She’s going to look at you funny the first time it happens, and she may even give you a “who the hell do you think you are”. But this is a teachable moment, and if she has half a brain she’s going to thank you and then deliver the right hand of Christian fellowship to that kids backside and teach them about not running into the street.

 

Now stop. Right there. Because I can see you’re about to get your knickers all up in a twist and start writing that scathing comment. Stop. Because you’re wrong, and I’m going to prove it.

 

You see, I did an experiment. Because I’m a scientist and that’s what we do.

 

A few days ago I made a post, right on here, and asked “what would you do?”, and the comments were awesome, instant, and overwhelming. You WANT to be engaged with your neighbors, you WANT to get involved, you WANT to help the young people in this community learn right from wrong. You WANT to do better.

 

I know this, for fact, because you told me so, hundreds of you. You all took part in a simple survey, a simple experiment, without even realising what you were doing. You cried out by the hundreds that you know right from wrong, that you are decent people, and that you want desperately to be engaged in helping make things better. You just don’t know where exactly to start that process.

 

I will tell you, it’s really quite simple when you think about it.

 

It starts, with not being afraid anymore.

 

You sit on your front porch and you see the same kids walk by your house every day. It’s your job to know their names, their parents, their stories. That’s what community IS. That’s the safety net these kids need when they’re too young to have developed a conscience of their own yet, they need the conscience of community.

 

We’ve spent so many years being trained to not talk to strangers that we’ve overlooked that we all start as strangers and that’s the very first step to making friends. Now we’re afraid to talk to anyone, and we have neighborhoods made of strangers. We’re dying without these local close friendships, without the connection of community, and you can see it right here. We flock, in droves to Facebook to have that sense of community and half of us don’t even know our next-door neighbors on a first name basis.

 

I’m here to tell you, if you’re not a little kid anymore, it’s ok to talk to strangers. Most of them are pretty decent people. Try it, you’ll see.

 

Stop. Being. Afraid.

 

Because it’s your fear that is destroying us.

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Now share it, and go say hi to your neighbors. Sit on your front porch tonight and invite them over for a beer. Grill out this week and say hello to every person that walks by. This, is how we build friendships. This is how we become neighbors. This is how neighbors become neighborhoods, become Community.

 

This is HOW we do better.

 

With kindest regards,

 

Christopher A. Boden