Don't look at the children

I always wave at children I see in public places.  However, after today, I think maybe I should give up that practice.  I was in line at the grocery store with my milk, steak, potato, broccoli and strawberries.  Suddenly, this little girl pops up from the depths of the cart in front of me.  I hadn’t even noticed her hunkered down there until right at that moment.  I smiled and waved.  She smiled and waved back.  Her mother threw a fit.  And I do mean a big giant temper tantrum right there in aisle 3.  This mom starts ranting about stranger danger, how she told the little girl to stay at the bottom of the cart, etc.  Uhm, well, now I was felling like a child predator by that point.  Fine, I get it.  This world has become this great big scary place.  We need to be extra careful, we need to we watchful every second of every day.  There are ads about who to call to report our suspicious neighbors who we think might be terrorists.  This ain’t the America I grew up in.  No, in that America, we didn’t even use seat belts because most cars didn’t even have them.  We let our kids play outside, alone, until well after dark.  And so many other things we can’t even fathom letting our children do now.  Is there any way to get our collective innocence back?  Can we unknow all we’ve learned about all the bad things in the world?  I heard an ad the other day saying the world is going to experience a major solar flare soon which could destroy the power grid worldwide.  Well, if an event like that does happen, then we’ll all end up back in the middle ages for a while.  We’d be forced to lean on each other.  Be a little nicer to each other.  Or maybe I’m just a little too trusting and I’d be the first one to die in the riot…