after i dropped the boy off to school, along with a neighbor that hitched a ride i took the dogs to the dog park that is no longer there. see, we had this dog park and for some reason about two people in the neighborhood starting squealing about dog parks and how “they attract pedophiles”.
i consider myself to be pretty “up” on the news of the weird and where one might find a pedophile. the logic that i’d “heard” first hand make no logical sense to me. i still take the dogs over there b/c it’s a good place for them to walk and not run into too many other people.
i seem friendly here on the internet don’t i? well, in real life i’m not. i used to be, sometimes i still am but more than anything i am not as social as i used to be. lucky for me, i have some of the very best friends a person could have that have been with me for long periods of time.
just in the past couple of years, i’ve become more antisocial than ever. especially if the ipod is on, that is my invisible wall that says i am in my own private space, please do not intrude. yet, i feel guilty sometimes for not making the proper southern “small talk” when approached by strangers.
after taking the dogs there, i went to search for the new dog park. oddly, this park in on the same street that house the majority of sex offenders in our next town over. after hearing the gossip that dog parks attract pedophiles, i found it ironic that they were moving it to a known pedophile area. the older i get, the less people make sense to me as a group.
after checking that place out, i had a mission to go and take photos of this lovely patch near the interstate that has wild flowers. every time i’ve driven by, it’s all i can do to force myself to stay on the road heading to my destination. i always say to myself, “when i come back from this place i am going to stop and take pictures of those flowers”. i always forget.
so today, i did it. i always get a weird feeling when i pull over to take pictures of things. i don’t know, like somehow i’m breaking a law and any minute the cops are going to pull up and shout through their microphones, “DROP THE CAMERA, GET YOUR HANDS UP”!
i have a theory about this anxiety i have. i look no further than my mother. she used to tell us to never go on someone else’s property b/c we could very easily (and most likely) be gunned down and murdered immediately.
i think in the years of our early settlers that may have been the case. you know, thinking people were trying to steal your cattle or whatever.
i always took most of what my mother said literally. to this day, i still fear stepping in someone’s else’s yard unless invited. you can never be too sure that a sharp shooter isn’t sitting up somewhere high in a deer stand, just waiting for someone to put a TOE in their yard so they can blow them to smithereens.
my mom is the classic, “you’ll put your eye out” mom and i’ve found myself saying similar things to my kids. i don’t know if it’s this generation of kids, or they are just smarter than i was but they totally don’t buy that kind of information. they’re like, “yeah right someone will shoot us, go have a nap mom.”
my mothers fears seem funny to me now, especially when i see her doing it with my daughter or son. i suspect this might be why i was afraid of everything earlier on in life.
it is interesting to me how things like this can stay with you, and you find yourself resisting something or having low level anxiety with no idea why.
me, i like to analyze cardboard if it’ll keep my mental gymnastics going.
which is precisely why most of those closest to me have just begun saying “i don’t know” lest the first why spawn an endless litany of why’s.
these are a couple of the pictures of the wild flowers, i’m working on the entire lot of them about 200 i think.
Posted by leah 
