Everybody loves a parade...

...especially if you get to be in it.

Under the oaks:  FM 518 as you've probably never seen it, although this pic might look crummy on a little phone screen. 

Despite it being 39 degrees with a nasty little northeast wind, a good time was had by all at the League City holiday parade this evening.  The turnout was great and the parade was fun - a more laid back experience than some of the others I've seen in my life (this was my first LC parade). 

It was quite sedate and slow-moving because many of the groups had to pause for performances at the very end of it.  That gave time for the rest of us to have some interaction with the crowd.  Barriers were erected only around the performance area, so kids were free to dash for candy, pet the animals, and have fun with the participants over the majority of the route. 

I walked back to Centerpointe at the conclusion of it.  I wish I could give you some pointers on how to best deal with traffic if you don't live close enough to walk to and from this annual event, but closing FM 518 is going to cause significant mobility challenges no matter how well-planned the festivities, and you're likely to wait in traffic no matter where you manage to park.  If you can handle a short walk, you could choose the municipal complex because parking there was very light this evening, and it's really a short walk from there across East Walker and then north for about two blocks on Park Avenue.  Not sure if that would work for families with small children, but it could be a zippy option for others. 

Near the end of the line, as the performances were taking place in front of that shuttle bus in the mid-ground ahead of us.  Note how compact and orderly those people are as they are piled up on both sides of the road.  Very well-behaved, as crowds go.   

The *real* boogey men (and women)

Almost as if on cue, an Amber Alert was called this afternoon, five days after I wrote about KTRK's coverage of the "free range kids" parenting movement and two days after my corresponding spoof went very-mildly-viral, the spoof of over-hyped news coverage that sensationalizes the rare stranger abductions that do occur.

The scene on IH-610 NB just south of IH-10 about mid-afternoon today.

THE WOODLANDS?!  OMG, THAT'S RIGHT NEXT DOOR!!
SEE?!?!  PREDATORS - THEY ARE **EVERYWHERE**!!
YOU CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL!!!

Well, yeah, "they" are everywhere, if it's crankheads we are referring to.  According to published reports (not spoofing now), allegations of methamphetamine use compelled child welfare workers to attempt to remove a child from her mother's custody.  The mother snatched her, the grandmother was implicated along the way, and the child was retrieved safely.  It wasn't the boogey man come to snatch an innocent baby off a quiet suburban street - it was just another in an endless series of domestic dramas. 

But along the way, those freeway bulletins reinforced unspecified boogey man terror in the hearts of perhaps one million Houstonians today.  Seriously.  I don't know how many motorists use the local freeways each day, but HCTRA alone reportedly handles a half-million.  And I think that the Amber Alert system is a good system except it has this unfortunate drawback:  these announcements don't provide any context as to what motorists are seeing.  Many people see "kidnapped child" and they assume that it must be a pedophile who intends to leave the child's lifeless body on the train tracks after he gets done violating it repeatedly. 

Sigh.  Ilona Carson presented the statistic the other day that there are only about 100 abductions of kids by strangers nation-wide each year.  Contrast that with this little gem:

Screengrabbed from this source. 

Two hundred and four thousand, give or take.  Versus one hundred.  Children are almost exclusively snatched by family members, but that type of thing doesn't usually make a compelling news story, so we rarely receive that vital piece of perspective through the "regular" channels (pun intended).  We mostly just get a distorted view and then we develop a distorted perspective to match it. 

Two hundred to one odds, give or take, given the vagaries of any particular year's statistics.  Remember that the next time a freeway marquee stops your beating heart. 

It was a family member.
It almost always is. 

Unsupervised children overpower helpless dog

A roving band of children cornered and seriously entertained a loose dog yesterday in the League City, Texas suburban neighborhood of Centerpointe.

It is suspected that the children were between six and nine years old.

Neither the dog nor the children were subject to any obvious control or supervision by hovering adults at the time of the incident.

The dog was rendered blissfully passive as she was alternately rubbed, scratched, and petted.

Witnesses report that the children and the dog also spent close to an hour engaging in games of chase and fetch within the public right of way, also without direct adult intervention, and without the dog being leashed.  The children had no prior knowledge of the dog's training or temperament, but successfully negotiated the play interaction with the animal despite this limitation, as evidenced by their constant screams of delight.  The witnesses refused to identify themselves for fear of social, legal, or regulatory reprisal. 

It is believed that no similar incidence of spontaneous, unchoreographed play has occurred anywhere in League City since approximately 1984, prior to the time when stranger danger paranoia swept American society. 

In the intervening years, normal children's activity has become increasingly criminalized, as evidenced by the case of the Virginia mother who was interrogated repeatedly by police for allowing her children to play unsupervised within their own yard. 

Much closer to home, a La Porte, Texas mother recently made national news when she was arrested and jailed for allowing her two children to play unsupervised on their suburban street despite her defense that she was, in fact, visually monitoring her children from her position in a lawn chair that may have been situated out of the public's direct line of sight.  Her children are the same ages as the children depicted above, and La Porte is located just sixteen miles from League City.

What prompted yesterday's bold demonstration of trust and affection is not known.  However, greater Houston's primary English language commercial news network, local ABC affiliate KTRK-TV, recently distinguished itself by documenting the "free range" parenting movement and showcasing with actual statistics the degree to which "stranger danger" fears are unfounded, and follow-up reporting by independent sources emphasized these facts.  It is possible that some local parenting attitudes are quietly evolving in the face of this compelling information.

League City police are not investigating yesterday's incident. 

Neither the children nor the dog were harmed during the event, although the dog's owners now wonder if her future expectations for affection will become a bit over-inflated.