Have you ever found yourself sitting on a bus and grinning ear-to-ear: “Hey, look at me, I’m in a bus all by myself, going someplace on my own!” If you have, you were perhaps ten or thirteen at the time. Unless, like me, you had overprotective parents, which may very well mean that you still delight in riding the bus unaccompanied. At twenty six. Thirty five. Sixty nine.
Now, I must say I don’t blame my parents for anything. Among my undeniably good qualities I count the fact that I don’t tend to blame others for what happens with my own life. The irony of the situation is that it was probably at least in part the overprotectiveness of my parents that helped me develop this character trait, for I always desperately wanted to run my own life. To blame others for my misfortunes would be granting them control over my life. No way, Jose. I am in charge of me, and I take all blame and credit for whatever happens to me (within reason, of course – I won’t blame myself for boarding a plane that gets hijacked or for being hit by a car operated so inexpertly that I could do nothing to predict or avoid the collision).
No doubt, my parents tried hard to be good parents. Can anyone really blame them for going overboard a little? I was growing up in a period of great uncertainty, as the familiar world was collapsing on everybody and chaos reigned supreme. After living for quite a while in relative stability, how would you like to wake up one day and find out that all the money your family has been saving for the last five decades have turned into rubbish overnight? How would you feel if over the course of five years the crime and disease rates in your city increased ten-fold, with violent crimes and third-world-type infections in particular shooting up considerably more? How would you like to live with the knowledge that the basement of your apartment building is occupied by drug addicts and that the streets that used to be so quiet and peaceful are suddenly filled by a gamut shady characters: homeless drunks; embezzlers of all sorts; pimps and prostitutes; packs of wild and sometimes aggressive dogs; groups of youths with big muscles, shaved heads and violent intentions; groups of youths with vacant stares and tubes of glue? And how would you like to bring up kids at times like that?
I must admit my parents sheltered me from all that crap pretty well. Yes, there was stuff on TV, of course, and there were beggars on the streets, but apart from that my world was filled with school grades, sports, good books, and good boys and girls. I was never raped, or mugged, or invited to try drugs, or touched in inappropriate places by pedophiles or bad boys, or run over by crazy aggressive drivers that filled the roads of my native city. Yet I can’t help but feel that the measures they took to ensure all that were somewhat excessive. It was not even so much *what* my parents and grandparents did. (Heck, I now realize my parents allowed me more than parents in North America allow their kids these days. Imagine, I could, in some environments and under certain conditions, run off with a bunch of other kids and be out of their supervision for several hours!) It was more about *how* they did it.
After all, the world around me was not THAT bad. Yet I was lead to believe it was. Before leaving the house, my mother always put on a very strict face and chanted the familiar mantra: “Don’t come near the door, don’t open it to anyone!” Even though opening the front door was ingrained in my mind by age seven as an absolute taboo act I must never commit, it was still repeated daily with an air of “Don’t you DARE to even THINK about it!” In the same tone, I was told almost every day, sometimes more than once a day, to NEVER even THINK about talking to strangers, getting into anyone’s car, letting anyone touch me, playing cards with anyone other than family, trying drugs, crossing the road against the light and so on and so forth. I can imagine such repetition might be appropriate and necessary for the naturally carefree and easy-going kids. That’s how my mother was as a kid, and I suppose she was projecting that on me. But I was an impressionable, anxious and obedient child with very good memory. Telling it to me ONCE would probably have done the job. Pounding the stuff in every day, often peppering it with horror stories about this and that person they knew who got raped, killed, or otherwise suffered a great misfortune, made me absolutely dread the world. Not consciously, no. But that, perhaps, is even worse.
I remember the day when I once mentioned to my mom that I would one day just like to go for a casual stroll with no particular destination. “Perhaps,” I said, “I’d go to the railway station and stand on an overpass, watching trains.” This shocked my mother. She read me a lecture and made me promise that I’ll never ever do that. Unless I was with an adult or a group of other kids, I could only go outside for a specific purpose, like walk the dog, or go to the school, or to the store. Apparently if you’re wandering aimlessly, you’re much more likely to be picked out by a criminal as his next victim. And you know, I still feel very uneasy if I am ever outside without a specific purpose, even in broad daylight, in the safest of neighbourhoods. I’m not scared of muggers or rapists, no, just weirded out. I feel as if all the people around are looking at me disapprovingly and wondering how dare I venture out for now reason at all. And I’m wondering the same thing along with them.
I’m also nervous when dealing with strangers. I don’t think they’re going to kill me, but I feel definite anxiety if I have to speak with anyone on the phone, or talk to a store clerk. It has greatly diminished through a very delibirate effort on my part, but it’s still there.
But all of that is relatively minor thing compared to the background all-pervasive anxiety I live with. It’s low-key, but it’s always there. The world is a bad place. Strangers are all malicious and out to harm me. Especially because I am a girl. Girls must be especially scared at all times – they are weak and vulnerable and the world is not for them, really; they must be sheletered from it by strong men in order to survive at all (my parents still insists I must not be outside after dark unchaperoned). Oh, how much did I, a tomboy and an independent spirit, resent that notion, and how unable was I, the impressionable little kid who believed adults, to resist its being firmly planted in my subconsciousness. Sadly, the North American society, with its cult of “safety” and focus on horrible things that can happen to one, especially to a female, helps fuel this anxiety.
I am not succumbing to all these fears and letting it ru(i)n my life. I fight them, oh hell, do I ever. I do daring, adventurous, fun things and enjoy them (one side effect of a sheltered childhood is constant craving for adrenaline; another is that sometimes something as mundane as a bus ride is exciting enough to fulfill the craving). I roamed the streets on my own at 2 a.m. I rode my bicycle on an unlit deserted road in bear country one night. I have recently earned a pilot’s licence, realizing my old dreams of learning to fly. I even learned to speak to waiters in restaurants without pushing my heart rate into the 180+ zone. And yet I still feel kinda weird when I’m outside on my own with no specific destination. Some things are just too deeply rooted in us by the time we’re grown-ups..
Tags: Life, childhood, parenting, coddling, safety, paranoia
