Thursday, April 19, 2012

Somewhere between common sense and hysteria

There are times when I think that I have been plunked down here in this town as a giant sociological experiment. I try to sit and watch and understand people's motivations because there are times when I simply can not understand what is going on.

Take for instance the last two days in our little town. There has been a manhunt. A guy was being served a warrant for something involving theft and drugs as well as possibly shooting at cops. Not great. But to a certain extent, a run-of-the-mill douchebag who has gotten himself into trouble and won't just man up and face the consequences. Instead he runs with a gun. He runs away from the cops in this small town. Through some residential areas. Helicopters, police dogs, law enforcement are all out trying to track him down. And like any smart dumbass he goes into wooded areas where he will be hard to track. So they give up.

Ok. This is something that could happen anywhere. But from my facebook page you'd think that a serial killer had been let loose and was pounding on everyone's doors trying to get in! People have been terrified. "Pray for the safety of our children!" (I do that everyday anyway.) "There's a crazy man in your neighborhood and he has a gun! Lock your doors!" (Ok. I did lock my doors. Common sense. We lock ours most of the time.) "Search is called off and now this crazy man is making my children stay inside on such a beautiful day!" (I let mine play outside. As usual.)

Seriously? I just don't get it. If I were living in a city I wouldn't have thought twice about it. There is a fine line between being safe and being paranoid. A friend of mine actually packed up her kids and high tailed it out of town to stay at her mother's because she said she wouldn't be able to sleep with her husband out of town. 

At no point did they consider that there was a risk of him going on a shooting rampage so really. A school was locked down for awhile because it was common sense to keep the kids in when the suspect was in the area. I just don't know how it got to the point that people were so afraid he'd be right on their doorstep ready to pounce. I'm a person of moderation (or at least I try to be) and I strongly feel that this situation was made worse because of the small town hysteria that surrounded it.

(We mentioned it to my inlaws. They checked out newspaper article online and actually found it funny how everyone was going crazy!)

1 comment:

  1. Small towns. Can't live in 'em. (Ha ha. Of course I live in a small town and in several months we're moving to an even SMALLER town - heaven help me - and I kind of dislike that part of my life right now.)

    ReplyDelete

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