The Return of the Three-Legged Elephant and Nosey Head

After my brother and I had taken some furniture for our respective apartments, my mom realized that the value and quantity of items in our storage POD did not justify the amount of money she paid for it each month. The tenants who are currently renting our house agreed to let us store the remaining items from the POD in part of the garage so that my mom could get rid of the storage and save some money.

Today, I met my mom and brother at the house to go through the remaining boxes in the POD before we moved everything into the garage. My mom told me that there were a few boxes of mine that I had to either take with me back to my apartment, throw out or, if there was room, to leave in the garage. Since I don't have much room at my place to store things that I will probably never "need," I was hoping there'd be some left over room in the garage.

I arrived to the house before my mom and brother and started rummaging through the POD. I pulled out all the boxes that were mine and set them out in a row to start investigating their contents. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were only 4 boxes, which meant a better chance of getting some prime garage space.

I thanked my past self for labeling the contents of each box:

Box 1: purses, teddy bears, art supplies
Box 2: yearbooks, books, misc
Box 3: beanie babies, old clothes
Box 4: graduation gowns, and my ren fair costume (lol)

While I wouldn't say that I'm a "pack rat," I find it really difficult to part with sentimental objects, and my definition of "sentimental" is very loose. Do I really need to keep a box full of beanie babies? HELL YES! Maybe one day they'll be collectibles! Or what if I want my future kids to play with them? Old report cards? I HAVE to keep them, they're legal documents! Kind of. A bag full of mostly broken sea shells? I can put them in a glass bowl for decoration!

I ended up condensing 4 boxes into 3 and storing them in the garage, while leaving with the fourth box filled with items that I wanted to take with me, which included:

- My old photography portfolio and negatives
- The Professional Correspondence Kit - a friend got this for my birthday a few years back since I'm so anally organized
- A few purses
- My glass animals
- My purple Gameboy Color, which miraculously turned on

Really intense game.

The best thing I took back with me is something that has disappeared and resurfaced several times over the course of it's existence. Now that I have it, I decided to scan it into my computer to ensure that it will forever be documented. Most of my close friend have seen it, or have at least heard about it, but now I'm putting it out on the interweb for the world to see (or, you know, for just the few people who read my blog).

It looks so innocent.

I feel really confident in assuming that most people had to write in journals and create drawings and stories and whatnot when they were in elementary school. When I lived in Russia, these were also activities that were expected of us as 7 year olds. It wasn't until years later (I was maybe 14?) that I reread my journal and immediately wondered why my mother was never contacted by my teacher about the disturbing stories contained in it.

I'm not saying ALL the stories I wrote were super unsettling; most had story lines indicative of a seven-year-old author.

The stories started out innocently enough:

Makes so much sense.

Then got a little stranger:

Extradited his ass.

These last 2 stories should have raised red flags for my teacher, but instead of a call home, I received spelling corrections and a check mark (good stories Natasha!). I first present to you, The Three-Legged Elephant:

Just a simple case of mistaken limb identity.

And Nosey Head:

The picture on the second page is my favorite.

...I'd like to chalk it up to watching too many horror movies as a kid.

Back in the Day

Lately, I've been reminiscing about my childhood and how much unsupervised freedom I had outside the house. I would argue that most people my age would agree that "back in our early years," we were allowed to roam the neighborhood and streets without our parents neurotically breathing down our necks. Generations before us had even more independence and leniency from their caregivers. 

With statistics like this at our disposal, how can we NOT worry?

After quite a bit of musing, I realized that we will never live in a world like that again. When I (eventually) become a parent, I know that I would be extremely apprehensive to let my kid frolic around without supervision, and the thought of this depresses me. 

According to the Gallup Poll, Americans perceive increased crime compared to previous years, even though crime statistics have proven an overall decrease in crime rates in the last decades (not a substantial decrease, but enough to merit a mention). So why, with crime on the decline, are parents becoming more and more overprotective of their children?

I've got a theory.

When our parents and their parents before them were kids, accessibility to news and media was limited. They didn't have smart phones with the internet at their fingertips or cable television with multiple news outlets reporting national headlines 24/7. People hitchhiked with strangers without a second thought; nowadays, you wouldn't think twice about getting in a car with a random person - they could kidnap you, drug you, abuse you or even KILL you! Ah! 

Our connection to media has made us painfully aware of all the horrors of the world and monsters that roam the streets just looking for unsuspecting victims. These horrors and monsters have always been here, but in the last few decades they have made headlines and convinced us that it's not safe out there. Boo.

The news and media have made us more paranoid, and perhaps rightfully so, but are Americans overly suspicious? Has the media taken away our chances of ever allowing our children to walk the streets alone without fear of some god-awful thing happening to them?