what if we're afraid of the wrong things?

I take my boys to the socialized park. Everything is free there.  Even the kids share with one another and get this, the parents actually chastise children who assert their individual property rights.  I live in a diverse neighborhood.  People see this and ask if it's "declining."  Apparently white flight is still the measure of a quality location.

A woman next to me sees Joel jump off the slide and says, "Should he be doing that?  It looks dangerous."  It's the equivalent of a jump from the top of a couch, but I respond with, "I think he'll be alright."  She calls her son over, cleans his arms with wipes and pulls out the hand sanitizer.  "Now, you didn't touch any kids, did you?"  He shakes his head.

A few minutes later, a girl wanders over and starts playing with Micah.  She introduces herself to me and her mom looks up from her iPhone and chastizes her for talking to strangers.  I can't blame her.  She doesn't know if I'll take her child away from her.  What she also doesn't know is that her cell phone is taking her away from her child.

Her husband asks, "Are you going to let him use that?" when Joel goes to the drinking fountain. Minutes later, his two year old is guzzling a twenty-ounce bottle of Gatorade. It's at this point that I start to feel really self-righteous about adhering to the values of a Culture of Fear.  Until I realize that I am, on some level, afraid of these people.  I lock my doors.  I rarely talk to strangers. I'm shy.  True, my fear connects more to be introverted, but it's still a fear.

So, I push Micah on the swing and talk to the Gatorade dad.  He says he's scared of raising a girl.  He's afraid he won't be gentle and his wife thinks he's a pushover on discipline and he wonders if he'll keep his job in this economy.  He asks me what I do for a living and I explain that I watch minds grow.  When he asks if I'm worried about online predators in a computer class, I tell him that I'm more concerned with the medium itself.  We can get really scared of the boogy man and miss the magical box taking our soul.

He reminds me that Socrates worried about written text and that middle age monks warned against the Guttenberg Press.  "Is it possible that you might be a little too worried about the dangers of computers?" he asks.  Micah hears us and responds, "It's possible pig."  

I leave with the lingering sense that this park is not a particularly neurotic place, but we are all united by the common experience of irrational fear.  What if, on some level, we're all afraid of the wrong things?

photo credit - stuant63's photostream on flickr creative commons