World gone mad

Do you remember when you were a child? Playing on your scooter, push-bike or strap-on roller skates outside the house? Round and round you'd go for hours. Mum and Dad had told you where you could go to and you daren't go beyond those limits.

My brother and I were allowed to go over to the woods. A small crop of trees on the edge of a playing field across the road from our house. He was allowed to go into the field with his friends and play football while I was to stay in the woods, climb trees (yes, I climbed tress) or made Mud Pies.

We would be out of sight of Muv and/or Dad for hours. Muv would be inside cooking up a storm or out in the back garden tending the veggies, while Dad would be servicing the taxi.

Just to prove how crazy the world has become a woman, Tammy Cooper, has been arrested for letting her children (aged 6 and 9) play in the cul-de-sac outside her house unsupervised. Shock horror!

I wouldn't want to be the neighbour that reported her to the police for abandonment.

Is the world really such an awful place now that a mother can't watch her children from the kitchen or the comfort of a lawn chair? Do we really have stand over our children 24/7?

I'm so glad I was given the chance:

- to play in the mud without being told, 'get out.'

- to learn the hard way that sticks do not make good imitation cigarettes. I fell over and landed on the stick injuring the back of my throat.

- to learn, never borrow a bike from a kid you just met and ride it really fast down a hill, because the brakes may not work. Cue fat lip, grazed knuckles and scabs covering the right side of the face.

- Stinging nettles hurt a lot when you fall from a tree into a patch.

- and don't jump into the deep end of the pool when you can't swim, it get really ugly real quick until that 10 year old saves you.

Kids have to learn lessons. They only get some lessons when they go out into the world. The front garden and safety of the cul-de-sac you live in is the very edge of the world and needs to be explored when you're in running while crying distance from home.

The police need to question the intentions of the neighbour and how they reacted. Surely when the woman you've come to arrest approaches you because she's seen you arrive it's clear she hasn't abandoned her children in her own front garden.

Charges have been dropped and Tammy is going after the police by suing them. Only in America?






Picture borrowed from here, I had nothing to do with creating it!

Social Media

I love social media. I would happily stand up in a Social Media Support group and say, ‘My name is Jodie and I am a Social Media-aholic’.

I have a Facebook and a Twitter account. I’m also on Instagram. I have a blog, but you know about that because you’re reading it. I’m resisting Flicka and Pinterest, just because I think I have enough.

I have a few pages and both my dogs have their own Facebook accounts, but I have to say they post more than me.

It’s not just the sharing of the details of my life in the vein hope that someone else actually gives a damn about what I’m up too; it about when I die, alone in my house, and have my face eaten by the cats that someone might notice my lack of posts and therefore come looking for me, that I like, it's other random posts from strangers that appear on my wall.

Today…I saw a post from such a random to pop starlet Nicki Minaj and it appeared on my wall because one of my friends had seen fit to add her voice to the 59,000 other comments.

It was a somewhat vitriolic post that included the phases ‘it makes me want to punch my cat’, ‘it has been proven that you can catch Aids from watching her music videos’ and ‘it’s (her music) cancerous to the earth’. Actually, if you look at the message as a whole there is some rather amusing imagery conquered up. It is still cruel and unnecessary.

If you don’t like her music, change channel and stop buying it from iTunes.

The starting message itself is interesting but some of the comments are hilarious, if not cruel in themselves!

Some comments were full of admiration for the original post and they agree with the sentiment (typed as they appear on the posting*):
‘Dude that kid gor balls…but no brains’ Jordan S-P
‘I think I love you, sir’ Naomi H.
‘Fu*k that b*tch nicki keep doing u boo…’ Ashley A.
There was more to that last one, but it became so unintelligible I couldn’t tell if it was supportive or abusive.

The religious and lifestyle ones always make me smile

‘That’s not very Christian’ Jesse G
‘(posters name), if you were Greek, you’d be Zeus.’ Jake M
‘Lolsomeone is pi*sed they don’t make the money she makes :)’ Billy S.
‘Ur gay’ Joe O.
‘2 words…STOP HATING’ Dsire B
‘If u think shes hurt by this u dimb as hell’ Tatiana FW. Do I hear the pot calling the kettle names?

Invariably though someone brings up the age old debate that haunts all forms of social media, and with good reason. Most people fire of comments and posts without a thought to the content and how it will appear. We’re all guilty of it, some more so than others. I know I’m not perfect, but at least I put a little effort in.

In this case I only saw Milo S’s attempt to set the world straight on the matter, but you just know there would have been others amongst the fifty nine thousand other comments. ‘Wow, most of these comments either have bad spelling or improper grammar. What a world where people can’t spell, at all.’

In some way I wish I was a researcher. I’d love to examine the way people are affected by social media. What would happen if it was to go away over night? What would happen to those that have grown up knowing no other way to communicate.

The days before mobile telephones when there was one telephone in the house and your dad had put a lock on it. When you made plans and stuck to them because there was no way to punk out at the last minute. When you physically had to invite everyone you wanted to come to your party because there was no ‘wall event’ capability.

‘Didn’t you get my wall invite?’
‘No, I haven’t looked at Facebook for weeks’
Sound familiar?


Most of all though how would they cope not being able to hurl abuse anonymously at all and sundry just because they felt like it and it was free?

Would they sit down with a pen and paper and write out the words ‘I don’t come to you respectfully as I don’t think you even deserve to be treated with sincerity’ (another line from the NM post means) and other nasty, down right mean spirited comments, fold it neatly, pop it into an envelope, put a stamp on it and place it into a letter box, after they had spent an age finding an address to send it too? Most likey the ‘Fan Club’.

I really don’t think they would bother.

I love social media. I really do. It’s helping me spread the word about my missing dog. It’s helping get word out about my business. It helps me stay in touch with family and friends who live overseas and far away places. It has even introduced me to many people I may not have otherwise come across.
In the words of Uncle Ben from Spiderman (2002) ‘With great power comes great responsibility’.
Please think before you press send.



* Swear words did not have * in them, they appeared in full in the original comments, but I'm a senstive soul that likes to have some modicum of manners :-)
Picture of telephone lock from here