David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Aug. 16, 2005

Is it safe to go outside or are there too many snowflakes?

Are the good old days gone forever?

When I was 12 years old, there were summer days when I'd see my parents only during meals and then later before bedtime. The rest of my time I rode my bike here, there, everywhere -- charting new territory, taking chances, getting my hands dirty. It was a glorious era. My two best buddies and I made our own fun. We had never heard of a "play date," and if we had, we probably would have giggled uncontrollably.

I get the feeling those days are no more. I don't see kids outside very often. In our neighborhood. We have those signs that read, "Slow Watch For Children" with a silhouette of a young, muscular boy running full speed. I don't know where that kid is going in such a hurry, but I haven't seen him much. Maybe he's sprinting because his mom just got home with the new Madden '06. Running home to play a game based on an outdoor physical activity -- the irony is delicious.

Some parents in my generation now think the world has become too dangerous to allow their kids to do what they did as kids -- play outside without constant supervision and without pre-planned structure. Can you blame us, though? Today's parents of young children have a lot more to worry about. We hear daily stories about sexual predators, kidnappers, murderers and all the freaks and creeps who go bump in the night. If you leave your kids unsupervised playing in the front yard, you're asking for trouble, or so it would seem.

I wonder if there really is more to worry about these days or if it's just a byproduct of the Information Age. Things were different 30 years ago. The United States was a lot bigger in terms of connectivity. News about a kidnapping in, say, Anaheim, CA, didn't find its way to Crossville. We had 30 minutes of Walter every night telling us "that's the way it is" and a smattering of local newspapers and TV news -- that was about it. But now we have cable news channels that struggle to fill 24-hour broadcast days. We have the Internet that makes stories from the Los Angeles Times just as accessible as stories from the Crossville Chronicle. We have cell phones that scroll updated headlines. You can't escape it.

Thirty years ago, the only time you'd know about a child abduction is if it happened in your hometown, maybe the next town over. But today we hear about them all, or almost all. We get just as many details about a child abduction in Anaheim as we do from one in Crossville. Multiply that by the 300 million or so people who live in the United States, and suddenly it seems that horrific events are happening all day every day. I think horrific events have always been happening on a daily basis, but now we know about more of them, whereas 30 years ago we only knew about the ones nearby.

It's like a long-range telephoto lens in December at Lambeau Field. Here's what I mean. You're watching a Packers game on TV, and it's snowing there. The TV cameras are very far away, but they use long-range telephoto lenses to zoom in on the action. When it's snowing, we the viewers see every single snowflake that falls between the camera and the action, and they're all in crystal clear focus. If the camera is 200 feet away, that adds up to a lot of snowflakes, even though it may be little more than a light flurry and the players have just a few flakes on their helmets. Cameras only 20 feet from the action show a more accurate reality.

Today "the news" covers 300 million people -- it sees all the snowflakes in its field of view. It was different 30 years ago. We didn't see the snowflakes falling in Anaheim or Dallas or Boston, we saw only the ones falling in our hometown.

When it comes to really, really bad news, I don't think people care about geography. They don't care where it happened. They care about what happened. It's the details that get people's attention, not the city limits. In terms of bad news, we all live in the same town.

So what I'm wondering is if I need to worry about my kids being victimized anymore than my parents worried about me being victimized. Maybe the good old days are still with us. Maybe I just need to drive slowly and watch for children. Maybe all I really need to do is buy a good set of snowtires.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.