Safety Rules

I felt the need to pause the television show we were watching recently and deliver an Important Parental Lecture to my 15 year old.

We were watching one of my favorite shows, a crime drama. A potential witness to a kidnapping was describing how he was nervous, watching a teenager he took to be intoxicated leaving with a man, until he noticed that the man was with a woman who seemed to be his wife - "Then, I figured, it was safe." As I described the moment to my husband the next day, he said, "Oh, you must have come unglued at that point."

My husband knows the story, the story that all of my kids have heard, about one of the most traumatic things that happened in our community when I was growing up. A girl from our congregation at church disappeared, along with her best friend. They were taken, and murdered, by a husband and wife serial killer team. (See "No, Not Cereal...") It doesn't matter if you're Gerald Gallego and Charlene Williams (responsible for the death of the girls from my town) or Paul and Karla Bernardo, a young, beautiful murderous Canadian couple who participated equally, or Cameron and Janice Hooker, with a dominant partner and one who simply goes along. No one can assume that a wife, or a woman, means safety.

My 15 year old is too trusting and naive anyway (a trait that I fear she gets from me). She once received phone calls and e-mails from a stranger that set off all kinds of mental alarms for her dad and me, but none for her. She explained that she felt "it was OK, because she's a woman," and my immediate, gut response was, "Do you know how many of the convicted Manson Family killers were women between the ages of 18 and 21? Three out of five!"

I don't know if that's "good" parenting or not, but I do feel that it's necessary.

Again, I found myself, with the TV program paused, saying, "Never, never never assume that a woman or a couple means that it's safe."

"I know, Mom. They told us that in my Red Cross classes." She's very proud of being a Red Cross Certified Babysitter. She started recounting things the instructor said about how to avoid being a victim - throw whatever you might have in your hands, scream, wet yourself, make a scene, make yourself an unappealing target.

That's fine, but I felt that I had to explicitly warn her again that danger may not look like danger. I reminded her about the girl I knew. Two teens were approached by a woman, a woman a good six inches shorter than my daughter, and offered a job putting flyers under windshield wipers. "They're both dead." Her eyes widened, and I worried, again, that she doesn't remember things that might be important some day.

This isn't the first time I've stopped in the middle of a program to have these discussions. I did the same thing once with three of my kids, two teens and an adult. The subject then was something that happened in 1974 at Lake Sammamish State Park in Washington. An attractive, well dressed, articulate young man with his arm in a sling approached a young woman and asked her for help loading his sailboat onto his car. "What's the red flag here?" I asked. They all looked rather blank. "Something about this scenario should be setting off warning bells. What is it?"

My youngest offered, "He's asking her to leave where she is and go someplace else with him." While I was gratified that she'd internalized one of the safety rules that we'd given her, that wasn't what I was looking for. None of them could think of anything unusual or dangerous about the request.

I pointed out, "How is he going to sail with his arm in a sling?" The younger two went, "Oh!" as the mental lightbulb went on.

My second born, who was 25 at the time, said, "Yeah - I wouldn't notice that at all. It wouldn't occur to me that anything was wrong."

"That," I informed her, "is what keeps me awake at night." She's bright and reasonably well informed, but she doesn't read people or situations well. I worry that it paints a figurative target on her chest.

The attractive young man in question was Ted Bundy. The sling was merely a prop. His arm was just fine - and there was no sailboat. He approached several young women at the park that day. Most turned him down. Two - Janice Ott and Denise Naslund - agreed to help, and died.

I hate the fact that friendliness or helpfulness can be fatal.

Sometimes, when we have these discussions, I can tell that my kids have grown up hearing different safety rules than my generation did. I once paused a program about a workplace shooting. Everyone in the office had been shot, but one was still alive, and attempted to crawl toward the phone while the shooter was still there. Hitting the pause button, I demanded, "What do you do in that situation?" - if you're in the midst of a group shooting.

Both of my teens immediately answered, "Play dead." Without prompting, they both said that the correct response was to hit the floor when the shooting started, and stay there, playing dead, until the shooter was gone. "Then you can dial 911."

I was glad that they both knew the answer that I was looking for, the answer that just might keep them alive.

I was sad that they live in a world where being involved in a mass shooting is seen as a possibility.