Same-ish as it ever was.

My Uncle told me recently that his eldest daughter and her husband just bought a house a few blocks from me and are moving in this month. My cousin is nearly twenty years younger than I am and we've never really spent much time together (our fathers had had a falling out years ago, so that didn't help matters). That being said, I am going to send her a 'welcome to the neighborhood' card. Odds are we may bump into each other at the local market in future and it would be nice to exchange pleasantries.  

***

Speaking of daughters, one of my dear friends has a 13-year-old. This teen, C., is self-confident, social, smart & silly in the best way. I don't know all the ins and outs of how my friend parents C. and her siblings, but I do know that they all are experiencing childhood and young adulthood quite differently than how we did. My friend and I, along with seemingly most of our other friends who were teens in the 1980s, had a childhood that is now what's being referred to as 'free-range'. I'd also remind folk that we were called and self-define as 'latch-key' kids because we often had no one to come home to after school let out. I recall some kids wore their house keys on a long piece of yarn around their necks. Mine was on a rabbit's foot key chain dyed green. 

Recently, C. was allowed to walk unsupervised to the shopping center about four blocks from home in order to meet with friends at a coffee shop. After the coffee date, my buddy's kid waited out front on the pavement for her dad to pick her up and take her home. There were other people around, but I believe her friends had already left when two men approached. One started making what I can only describe as 'Hey, baby!' comments. C. ignored the dude, but the comments didn't stop. She then did what I think I would have done were I in her situation: She rolled her eyes. Quelle horreur! I guess the creep didn't like feeling belittled by a teen and lunged forward grabbing C.'s crotch in response. 

When my friend shared what had happened to her daughter I was, of course, upset for C., but, sadly, not surprised. C.'s mom and I (and many of our friends) have experienced similar very unpleasant scenarios when we were young. 

The difference between our experiences of harassment and C.'s is that C. actually shares with her mother 'the good, the bad and the ugly' of teenage life. It never would have occurred to us to tell our parents anything of this nature. I think because we thought that no good could have come from it--grabbers typically aren't easily apprehended and brought to justice, are they?-- and just having to say what had happened out loud to anyone would have somehow felt almost as humiliating as having experienced being grabbed in the first place. 

I was a year older than C. when my crotch was roughly grabbed by some rando at a rock show. A friend and I had taken the train to a neighboring city to watch a line-up of some of our favorite bands at an arena in Oakland, Ca.  For those who are curious, this annual event was called Day on the Green. I was down in front very close to the stage for a band called Y&T. It was great. I loved this band and we, the crowd, seemed to all be head-bobbing in unison when I felt a kind of violent forcing of someone's hand between my legs and then a full-handed grab of body parts. It was over pretty fast. Stunned and angry, I turned around to see if I could spot who did it, but certainly no one was holding up a sign that read: It was me, sucka! The crotch grab ruined my being down in front, so I pushed my way back out of the crush of people until I found my friend and stayed put next to her for the duration.

A sea of stoners...Day on the Green, 1985

Line-up of the event

I am so glad that my friend and her daughter have a more open relationship than either of us had with our own mothers. I know that when C. confided in her mom what had happened on C.'s very first foray to the shopping center unattended, my friend nearly lost her shit. She asked C. if C. wanted to call the police. C. said, 'No.' My friend pressed the issue a bit, but C. said she didn't feel like talking and just wanted to move on. What's heartening is that if C. ever does want to share how that event made her feel, then her mom will be there for her to listen.