Lenore Skenazy of The New York Sun left her 9-year-old son at Bloomingdale’s with “a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.”
Several hours later…he turned up at home, safe and sound.
Surprised?
Half the people she told that story to were, but for what reason? Have we come to distrust our fellow man so much that we feel the need to keep children under lock and key so that they have no chance to foster any type of independence? I think we have, and Lenore would agree.
The problem is not that we aren’t aware of the risks, and haven’t heard stories of what can happen, it’s that “we all know that story — and the one about the Mormon girl in Utah and the one about the little girl in Spain — and because we do, we all run those tapes in our heads when we think of leaving our kids on their own.”
Except, instead of making them safer, locking them up just makes them dependent and afraid of the world.
The statistics show that this is an incredibly rare event, and you can’t protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning.
So perhaps it’s time for everyone to just relax a little bit, trust a little bit, and give a little bit, because otherwise, what kind of world have we created for ourselves?
Urban Monarch and Modern Drunkard put together two great guides about how to score free drinks when you go out. Put down the credit card, and slowly step away.
Artist Felix Beck created a non-visual graffiti project called Soundbombs, “innocuous-looking 6-inch plastic shells that broadcast short clips (lines from Shakespeare, flatulence, or anything else you record) to unwitting passersby”. He doesn’t sell them, but instead takes applications, and prospective users must tell him where they will use it and how much they’re willing to pay. Get loud.
Sodium Laurel Sulfate, and ingredient in toothpaste, blocks sweet sensors on your tongue, which explains why orange juice tastes so bad after you brush.
Stuart Haygarth created the Tide Chandelier out of man made debris that washed up along a stretch of the Kent coastline. “The sphere is an analogy for the moon which effects the tides which in turn wash up the debris”.
Though it’s all over the news and the blogosphere already, I just had to give Wesley Autrey some blog love of my own for his heroic actions. Autrey, a 59-year-old construction worker, jumped in front of a subway train to save Cameron Hollopeter, a 20 year old film student suffering from a seizure, shoving him into a two foot deep trough and lying on top of him while 102 feet of train passed overhead.
This story almost brings me to tears. I wish only the best for someone so willing to risk his life to safe the life of a complete stranger.
Paul Middlewick stared at the London Underground map for so long, he started to see animals. Then, he realized that he wasn’t crazy, the tube lines, stations and junctions of the subway really did form into the shape of an elephant. Since that fateful discovery some 17 years ago, many more members of the animal [...]
FlapArt makes book covers that are sure to surprise those around you. Now you can cover up your latest installment of Harry Potter with titles like How to Murder a Complete Stranger and Get Away with It, How to Make Your Mother A Porn Star, and Perfecting the Art of Fart Projection if you want [...]
