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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Don't talk to strangers

Or guys that try to lure you into a corn field and show you a bunker they've built.

But Jennifer already knows that. She's reading "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold, and came to me, noting that the girl, who is 14 in 1973 seemed awful naive. Well, I was 13 then, and yes, we were naive and innocent in ways that seem just silly now.

That was the time when my mom would tell me to beat it, with my best friend of course, and go out and play in the woods or the power line trails that criss crossed our land before it became built up with mini-chalets. And so we would, until dark. It never occurred to us that neighbors could be bad, or it would be unwise to go into their homes.

It even didn't occur to me in my early 20s, when I ran out of gas on I-5 coming home from a late-night city council meeting in Everett. Pondering what to do, as we didn't have cell phones then, a man pulls up, nice guy and offers a ride home, which I accepted. Yep, I did. And I made it home safely.

My daughter looks at me as I recount this story, which is now during the Ted Bundy era, as if I were nuts.

"Why would you do that? And why would your mom let you go off into the woods for hours. You won't even let me go around the block hardly."

No, alas, I wouldn't. The monsters were still in existance then, but alas, they hadn't made the headlines yet. We all thought "In Cold Blood" was frankly an embelishment by Truman Capote.

"Well, I would never do any of the stuff this girl did in the book."

Good. For once, no argument from me.

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