Let me tell you one of the ways my beloved mother drove me up the wall when I was growing up.
She watched the 5 O’Clock News every day.
I grew up in Jersey, part of the Tri-State Area, which includes New York, where I was born. In 1972. Otherwise known as The Year Everything Went Straight To Hell.
I’ve had extensive conversations with people older than myself, and I know for certain that I emerged simultaneously with the wave of malaise and despair in which we currently reside. Even folks born in the late 60s agree. 1972: Hell In A Handbasket.
Anyway, during the late 1970s, before my dad would gratefully return from NYC’s urban deathmaze each night, my mom would fully absorb the 5 O’Clock News. In a goddamn bathrobe! With clutchable lapels! I shit you not!
Thus, my nascent self was exposed to the full dose of Fun City’s yellow tele-journalism, filtered through my own mom’s brain. Thanks to the evening news (before my father forbade it in the household), I was sent to my quaint suburban grade school with the following nuggets of wisdumb:
“Don’t leave your drink unattended, someone will put angel dust on the rim.”
I had to ask Dad what “angel dust” was because of this, and both Mom and I got a talking-to. It’s PCP, which I’ve been accused of using, but have never actually seen. I have no more interest in it now than I did in 1982. It reminds me of a big-city drug counselor who visited our school, and asked my entirely baffled classmates, “You kids ever do Bazooko? Bazooko?”
“Bazooko” was apparently a cocaine paste that was pink and tasted like bubble gum. I heard about it later on the 5 O’Clock News. I’ve never actually seen any, unless I mistook it for gum.
“Yabba” was some kind of cranked-up meth infesting the Mexican community of Atlanta when I moved here in 2002. Usage resulted in the taking of a hostage at knifepoint. That I saw. (On the news, silly.)
“Don’t stick your finger in a coin-return slot, you’ll get poked with a drug needle.”
This one morphed over time into an AIDS needle, once that scare overwhelmed all others. Before that, it was a dope needle, which would get you instantly addicted and turn you into a teen prostitute. Anything to get more dope. A pimp would see that glassy, wanting look in your eyes, and POOF; you’re a sex slave.I’m not saying that’s impossible, but the idea of a hidden needle alone kept me from poking any coin slots, regardless of what it might be carrying.
“Throw out any apples you get trick-or-treating; kooks put razor blades in them.”
Never happened. Ever. It did in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and it was taken as fact. Remember; if something is filmed, it can be used to make people believe something, true or false. Pay close attention to the stock footage used by news programs; half the time it comes from schlock movies like I Am Legend.
I’m not saying you should wolf down fruit from strangers, but if you can’t tell a foreign object has been pushed through the skin of an apple, you probably can’t read this either.
I’m also not saying that no one’s ever tainted Halloween candy, but if someone does, it generally turns out very poorly for them, and you better believe the 5 O’Clock News gets involved.
“Perverts are out there, and they will try to touch you.”
I don’t encourage kids to use the Internet or read this site, but if I did, I’d tell them this about child molesters: nothing.
Telling kids about child predators, under the guise of a warning; describing to a child what they do: Psychologically, that’s awful close to actual molestation, is it not?
Think about that a moment, from the eyes of a child. This horrific act didn’t happen to you, but another child. Here’s a description of the act, just vague enough so that your young mind can easily conflate it with actual monsters. In general, that’s all a child knows of fear.
Real pedophiles are treated about how you’d expect them to be by society. There is no earthly reason why your children should know anything about them, until they’re adults. Pedos are typical bait for virtue-signalers, who act as though we’re all not already revolted by the mere suggestion of child-rape. If you notice, Social Justice Warriors memorize lists of sex offenders like Fantasy Football rosters. They drop these names into casual conversation, so that if you don’t recognize the name and show the proper disgust, they can cluck their tongues at your negligence.
It isn’t just sex offenders, either; it’s often victims of police action, which always remains disputed whether the officers are innocent or guilty. SJWs are deathly afraid that someone will offer up a martyr’s name, and they won’t recognize it. That is the impetus of their concern; their own aggrandizement and image. Watch out for these motherfuckers. They possess not a whit of self-awareness or irony, and by nature they are ticking time-bombs.
This began the “Don’t Wander Off” Era, which continues to this day. Kids wandered off in the department store, got snatched, and turned up headless in a ditch weeks later. It tragically happened to a man named John Walsh, who transformed his anguish over the murder of his son into a TV program called America’s Most Wanted. It’s why you see those CODE ADAM stickers at Wal-Marts.
It’s also why our mothers were hysterical almost all the time. Portable phones for children were science-fiction in the 1980s. If contact with a child was lost, for all intents and purposes, so was the child. Straying outside the range of your mother’s voice was unconscionable, and could result in severe corporal punishment. Restriction. Reversal of privileges. ADDED CHORES!
What was the first thing Mom said, when you walked in the door, after dawdling an extra five minutes at your friend’s house?
“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW WORRIED I WAS ABOUT YOU? I HALF-EXPECTED TO SEE YOU ON THE NEWS!!!”
This is the hysteria that results from exposure to news media that is sensationalist and emotionally manipulative. You know, like it is now.
But you don’t check the news that often in the course of a day, do you?
Really? That often?
Oh my goodness.
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