As Safe As Safe Gets

I have to give it to Macedonia. It is one safe country as far as children are concerned. Each evening I am amazed to see young, I mean young children hanging outside the apartment buildings, in the parks and with no parental supervision. We would never consider that even in some place as safe as Abingdon. We always have to know where are kids are and we feel even better if they are in our fenced in back yards where we can see them. But here these kids are out for hours each night, even as late as 11:00 or later. More than likely they are in close proximity of their homes but there is no adult hovering around to make sure little Tommy doesn't get a scrape on his knee or that Susie is properly sharing her toys with the other kids.

My brother-in-law tells me child abductions are almost unheard of and if something like that did occur the family of the child would go and beat the crap out of the assailant and his entire family; and if he is still alive then the cops will beat him as well. It seems to be a very effective system for deterring crime.

Because of this Truman has enjoyed some new found freedom. Freedom that will obviously last until we step on the plane to come home, but by gosh she is enjoying every minute of it while she can. At least three nights a week Truman and Tea' are walking to the local McDonalds or one of the numerous parks to hang out with other kids their age. There are often 20 kids just sitting around talking. She loves being in this non-parental state of being. What she doesn't know is that when her father gets here he will be following them to make sure what they are doing meets his standards and being that he has been there done that in this city at her age, he will know exactly where to go.

Of course, she did have one bad experience where a boy came up to her in the park and front of other girls tried to show her porn from his cell phone. She was like whatever, go away. He then continued with a few vulgarities that I won't mention but it prompted my daughter to promptly kick him in the balls from which he fell swiftly to the ground. Ah.... she is her mother's daughter.