I was talking to my mother on the phone the other night. I told her about my plan to invite a friend over for dinner and a drive around my neighborhood next month to check out the Christmas lights. Then I reminisced about the best streets for Christmas light viewing in Pittsburgh and suggested that my mom check them out this year.
Her response was, “I don’t drive at night. ‘They’ are shooting people at night who drive.“
She’s afraid.
Last spring, in a neighborhood about 5 miles away from where she lives, there was a shooting at an AirBnB house party where 200+ teens were partying. Two teens died and 8 people were shot.
Then, just last month, there was a drug/gang related retaliation shooting at a funeral just a few blocks away from her house. This shooting was during daylight hours.
I told my mother that nobody is targeting old ladies driving around nice neighborhoods looking at Christmas lights. Since she doesn’t go to house parties full of teens from the ‘hood or funerals for gang bangers, she’ll probably be fine.
Then I shut up. She doesn’t want to hear a logical argument from me. She prefers to hide in fear of “They“.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. My mother has been telling about what “They” are doing for years:
- “They” are murdering people and putting them in the basement – after police found a woman had murdered her husband and hid the body in her basement.
- “They” are stabbing people downtown – after a stabbing during a brawl late at night outside of a bar.
She has her phone stop to alert her whenever “They” do anything dangerous. She gets Facebook alerts and news alerts continuously.
An elderly neighbor of mine told me she wasn’t handing out Halloween Candy this year because “They” are putting fentanyl in candy. She said she didn’t want to be held liable if some kid OD’d from candy she’d given him. This was in response to the latest Halloween “They are trying to poison our children” scare mongering. When I was a kid, we were told “They” were putting razor blades in apples to give to kids at Halloween. I wasn’t too worried even then. I wasn’t planning on eating the apples until I’d gorged myself on candy. And even at age 5, I figured I could slice the apple first to check for razor blades. Plus, we knew and liked everyone in our small town.
I didn’t even bother trying to explain to my neighbor than no drug dealer was going to put fentanyl in random candy shipments to poison kids because drug dealers aren’t in the business of not making money selling drugs. She had already made up her mind to be afraid of “They”.
These past few weeks there were countless news stories about how “They” were going to show up at polling sites with weapons to threaten the workers, intimidate voters, deny the election, etc.
On other stations there were opposing stories about how “They” were going to stuff ballot boxes, rig the elections, bring in “fake voters”, etc.
To hype this up even more, every news station led for weeks with a story was about armed men who were standing around ballot drop boxes in Arizona and a related lawsuit to get them to stop.
I swim next to a community center that is a popular voting place. Every election, for two weeks the parking lot is full of volunteers, campaigners and voters. This year was no different.
I am up close and personal with “They” every day.
“They” are all nice people. “They” are our neighbors. “They” actually go out of their way to helpful, kind and courteous. “They” volunteer and run up to people’s cars to direct them to open parking spaces, the drive thru for handicapped voters and the building for pedestrians. “They” wave and smile to every car entering and leaving.
I suspect it’s pretty similar all over the country and in most neighborhoods.