Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Love in the Third Degree.
Last year, Shannon decided to work for me instead of being pushed into walking to work about 2 miles away at McDonald’s (and crossing a four-lane highway, to boot). My answer? Absolutely not. I don’t care who used to walk along Highway 20 to work and how safe things were 30 years ago.
(I’ve got news for you—I myself was not safe 30 years ago, and he was literally invited into my home.)
The same goes with letting my younger daughter walk alone after dark, even between my house and her dad’s house, ten minutes away. No. No, no, no.
I live in an upscale neighborhood. The only crime is usually when I’ve got roofers vandalizing my property or the neighbor’s contractors stealing huge pots of plumbago from my front yard for Mother’s Day or teens from the next neighborhood slipping into my side yard to smoke pot and me running them off with a broadsword and a flashlight.
But within 1 mile of my home (as the crow flies), there are 2 registered sex offenders. Just down the road is yet another, and across the highway, not far from McDonald’s, live another five. I know this because the State of Florida publishes this information online.
If I cross the Rocky Bayou Bridge, closer to where my kids go to school, that number increases by multiples.
So in answer to the suggestion that one or both of my girls walk to the nearby shopping center to work, not no, but HELL NO.
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