They're coming for me

The old guy with thick glasses -- whose Lhasa Apsos only wanted to take a dump when succulent, young children made their way to and from school -- worked the morning and afternoon potential-child-molester shifts.

Joining the dogwalker in the afternoon was the lumbering middle-aged man who lived in a house with three other creepy men and took his strolls when students were streaming from the building.

In grade school, we didn't need counselors, musical assemblies about stranger danger or flashing Amber Alert signs to spell out that there was something a bit off about those guys, even if their intentions weren't malicious. We simply avoided them, and if any of us told our parents about them, I wasn't aware of it. Because it wasn't a big deal.

They were weird. We didn't want to be involved in any weirdness. We walked around them.

Yes, walked. We left our houses in the morning and the school in the afternoon and used our legs as transportation -- without adult supervision. Close to a mile, in some cases, and starting in first grade.

Yes, first grade, as in a six-year-old with no defenses other than a pocket knife used to peel an orange.

Yes, a knife, that useful tool that most people assumed properly trained children could wield without slitting a classmate's throat.

No one molested us. No one abducted us. No one shot us. No one robbed us. No one had an unfortunate orange-peeling accident. At least not on our route or school grounds.

There was a rumor going around about a guy dressed as a clown who took kids to the neighborhood Catholic school's parking lot and cut off their arms, but as Matt Drudge was still giving sloppy blow jobs in rest stops back then, there wasn't enough sensationalism to inspire parents to grab their pitchforks.

Now, the bogeyman is everywhere.

He's in seat 25E. Yeah, that olive-skinned guy with the beard. Look at his Burger King bag. Muslims don't even eat meat, do they? I bet he could fit a lot of explosives in that. Did anyone search him? Is anyone positive that his "Whopper" won't bring down this plane?

He's the coach at Little League. Why does a <i>man</i> want to be around children? No adult wants to hang out with kids, except mothers, and they only do it because someone would call child services if they didn't. What is wrong with <i>him</i>?

People are scared. Disproportionately scared to actual threats, and it's getting worse.

Being a native Jersey girl, I'm obligated to receive at least one forwarded "You know you're from NJ" e-mail weekly, and according to the list, the number one way to prove that you were raised in the state is that you've been seriously injured at Action Park.

If Action Park were to exist today, its sole purpose would be to train aspiring trial attorneys on what constitutes extreme negligence. The Alpine Slide -- with no guardrails and controlled by the rider, forces of nature and one's respective god -- would highlight the quaintness of a society that once considered taking some lumps to be part of the growth process. Shit happens, you break a bone, deal with it.

Even its children.

The owners of Action Park hated children. They wanted to see children suffer, to watch them limp from the park with five-inch gashes peeking out from under their Hypercolor t-shirts.

And we loved it.

We begged our parents to take us, and only those parents without health insurance refused. They weren't afraid of a few flesh wounds if it'd shut us up for the day. An intubation tube a day keeps the "I want"s away.

In an attempt to stave off lawsuits, the owners did place bales of hay around rides and form their own ambulance crew, and so, for over 20 years -- with occasional deaths and frequent maimings -- the park stayed in business.

Today, Action Park is called Mountain Creek and the Alpine Slide requires helmets and knee- and arm-pads -- which can't be donned until after watching a safety video.

A safety video. How we've fallen.

We're scared. We're afraid of a few cuts and bruises. We're terrified that everyone we pass on the street has malevolent intentions. And if you live in the South or Midwest, you're scared shitless that a terrorist attack is imminent at the Omaha FunPlex.

Without much protest from the opposing side, the Republican Party is campaigning on a platform of: "Vote for the other guy and die." As if John Kerry or any of the myriad third-party candidates will invite Osama bin Laden over for tea and crumpets and to discuss the state of American sitcoms, but people are buying it.

It's that fear and paranoia that allow law enforcement agents to board a train, videotape passengers and demand their Social Security numbers after someone finds a scrawled bomb threat in a bathroom.

Millions of tri-state residents pour into New York City each week. We live in Jersey City, Newark, SoHo, Staten Island -- and we go on with our daily lives because we have bills to pay and pretentious Burundian-Portuguese fusion food to savor.

Yet, a significant portion of NYC metro area residents plan to vote for Bush. Some of them have never voted Republican and will turn their backs on more pressing domestic issues under the notion that a guy who's stumbled through life can prevent a lone, angry Pakistani taxi driver from taking out the Verrazano.

The government cannot prevent every terrorist attack. No government can. We live in a global environment, where millions of pissed-off people with no group affiliation can hop a plane to anywhere in the world and independently kill hundreds. You don't need to be a card-carrying member of al-Qaeda. You don't even need to be Muslim. All it takes is a homemade bomb and a dream.

When the Bush administration releases another vague warning about a terrorist attack that might be impending or in the planning stages or maybe just a good idea from a Tom Clancy novel, the president's approval ratings go up. Instead of questioning why the intelligence is incomplete and obviously skewed to generate panic, Americans rally around the devil they know.

But what's the point of living in an allegedly secure country if you can't abort your fetus in the hopes of harvesting its stem cells to cure your mother's Alzheimer's -- all while listening to Howard Stern on the radio and watching porn on DVD? Life isn't much fun if all you've got to carry you through the day is the "Left Behind" series, Christian rock and the smug belief you're going to heaven.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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