A Dilemma

December 12th 2011

I’ve just worked out that next term Patrick will need to be at the swimming pool at 8.45 am once a week, meaning Ben and Emilia will be left to find their own way to school that day.

This is fine, they have done it before (although I did just happen to have to ring up school later that morning anyway, and while I was on the phone, the secretary did have a quick look at the register to check they had made it. I think us Mums do need a little reassurance as our kids take these first steps towards independence.)

However, it has come up for discussion what route they should take;

a) the lonelier, muddier alleyway towards the woods, through the field behind the school or

b) the busier pavements, the road way where most parents walk, which requires them to cross one more road.

So, which would I rather? Knocked down by a car or molested by a stranger?

I don’t seriously think that either way poses any real risk but it is a question.

Not one that bothered my parents though. My brother, sister and I went to this same school and I am pretty sure that we went mostly unaccompanied, though which route, I have no recollection, probably both interchangeably.

Although, clearly there wasn’t any danger then, everybody did it. And particularly in “my world”, bad things didn’t happen at all. 

Apparently, I used to talk about “my world” quite a lot. A world where the sun always shone, flowers grew, butterflies fluttered and everyone was gentle and nice and kind.

Dad likes to remind me of a time when we were in a Little Chef and I overheard some irate customer complaining about to the waitress about the coffee tasting like dirty dish water. He obviously wasn’t being very nice about it as I (aged about 4) turned to my Dad and said;

“In my world [which, don’t forget is full of lovely things and everybody is nice and kind], in my world, if anyone spoke to me like that, I’d tell him to F*ck Off”

Whereupon my disciplinarian parents,fell under the table, they were laughing so much.