BECAUSE YR NEVER TOO YOUNG TO BE A CORPORATE FELON

[defrog]

ITEM: Two sisters, aged 11 and 3, open a fruit/vegetable stand on a residential street corner – and are shut down by the cops after someone complains to the mayor’s office.

The official reason: the stand causes traffic problems, and is also a violation of residential zoning laws.

Clayton Mayor Gregg Manning explains why it’s important to enforce the law no matter what:

"They may start out with a little card-table and selling a couple of things, but then who is to say what else they have. Is all the produce made there, do they make it themselves? Are they going to have eggs and chickens for sale next?”

Yes. Imagine the horror.

He has a point. When I was nine, my sister and I started a Kool-Aid stand to raise some cash. By sundown, we’d put Kroger’s out of business. And remember the spiraling inflation of the early 70s? That was us. Our bad.

For more information on how American childhood has evolved into a “no fun allowed” zone where everything is illegal or bad for you, see this column from the LA Times on the death of the term “go out and play”. It asks a very good question: is America really a more dangerous place than it was when we were kids, or are parents simply more afraid?

Personally, I suspect the latter, but then I don’t have kids. Those of you who are actually parents, I’d be interested in yr thoughts on this.

Let’s blow this pop stand,

This is dF

Comments

[trillsie.livejournal.com]

It asks a very good question: is America really a more dangerous place than it was when we were kids, or are parents simply more afraid?

Good question. I think it's a combination of the two. I certainly didn't have armed police walking the halls at my school. I didn't have security cameras in my elementary school. My parents didn't have to ring a bell to be buzzed in at my school.

At the same time, we are a lot more aware of what is going on around us. Frankly, as a parent, it scares me. My two youngest cannot go out to play unless my oldest is with them. He'll be 16 in September. The 10 and 5 year olds are not allowed out without someone there with them. And even if Bobby is with them, he has a cell phone with him just in case.

[dinopollard.livejournal.com]

I think people are just more paranoid. The government and the media have gone to great lengths to keep Americans scared shitless and it's worked marvelously well.

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

I'm sure American cities are more dangerous than they were, but...

I spent the first ten years of my childhood in Johannesburg. Me and my friend used to play otuside all the time. And I don't mean int he garden, I mean, we bicycled all over, we toured the neighborhood jumping from rooftop to rooftop, we went trespassing on work sites and in construction zones... and it was normal, and nobody was paranoid.

You can't do that now--in the Joburg of today it's not safe to be out in the street, even as an adult. But I severely doubt that the Johannesburg I grew up during the apartheid era, in the period when a State of Emergency was raised--was any less dangerous than any of America's worst cities today.

-- JF

Johannesburg nI gravely doubt that Johannesburg then was lkes sdangerous than US cities

Danger! Danger Will Robinson!

[garbagecanmusic.livejournal.com]

That's a good question, and I think about it a lot. I think paranoia has ruined a kid's childhood nowadays. That mixed with every rule humanly imaginable imposed on the kid. They can't hang out, they can't loiter, they can't do a damned thing without being harrased.

The main thing that worries me is that there seems to me a ton of more traffic than in the past. I don't have a fear of the boy being kidnapped or molested (an irrational fear that is), but I do have a fear of him getting hit by a car.