Safety Net

Remember back a number of years ago when someone tampered with a bottle of Tylenol and changed our whole way of life? Faith and security have gone down hill ever since that fateful day. All pill bottles are now so secure that it takes the strength of Samson to open them. Thousands of other items are "open proof" also. They tout them as being child proof but they force many of us to seek out a child to get them open for us. Even the items that are not potentially harmful if tampered with, are impossible to open because they are 'shrink wrapped'. I have learned to use a stitch ripper outer to get into shrink wrapped objects.

We live in fear of getting ecoli and other even more dreadful diseases from buying pre packaged vegetables, contaminated meat from abused cows, with or without MCD. We must be constantly on alert for scam artists calling our homes and we have shredders now to try our best not to have our identity stolen. We work in schools behind locked doors, with security cameras and must inform our children of the dangers lurking around every corner. Terrorists,since 9-11 are always just below the surface of our minds, the right to bear arms is out of control... it's enough to drive one crazy. I won't even get into the dangerous potential ever present on our Internets. Woe is us!

We do have to burden our children with the knowledge that there are "bad things " in our scary world and we must prepare them to deal with them.

With all that in mind, a few weeks ago one of our schools desided to have a series of drills. Might just as well get them all over with at one time. So, they informed the student body of their plans and did tell them that sometimes "bad things" can happen at school and they were going to have drills so that if they ever needed to take action against these things, they would be ready. They proceded to have a fire drill, then a tornado drill and a drill to practice what procedure they would use if an intruder ever got into the school.

That evening at home one of the students, a kindergarden student, was in the bathroom of his home with the door shut so he had to shout to be heard, said, "Ab, what was your favorite bad thing that could happen at school?"

Ab shouted back, "The intruder was my favorite!"

"The intruder was my favorite,too!" Cool.

Kids are delightful! Resilient too.


323 days till we get a new president.

Quote for today: " What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think, vulcanize society."

-President Bush, possible Trekkie. January 21, 2000