kay alina

Ack. You know, sometimes I don't know exactly where to draw the
line. One day at the community college, Jay climbed just a short
way up one of the trees. I was fine with it. But an
administrator/teacher/something... came by and yelled at him to get
down. I assumed it had something to do with liability? You might
know, Pam. What's up with that? Now I'm never sure when we're out
if a wall or tree is "ok" or if someone is going to come by and
holler at us. Amazing how a single incident will make you
paranoid. I will need to make sure I'm very conscious about these
things... and not succumb to my knee jerk "someone is going to yell
at us" reaction. See now I'm feeling a mite crappy because I know
that since then there have been several instances where I've
disallowed his climbing in a public place due to fear of getting in
trouble. I just hate when strangers take it upon themselves to
fuss. And they do.

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This reminded me of a situation that happened to me in my early twenties.
My mom and I were traveling on tour in Morocco. We had left the pre-dinner
cocktail party
early to go for a walk We saw two beautiful lion statues and thought it
would make a nice
picture. I climbed up some steps and wrapped one arm around the lion for a
candid pose and suddenly
heard yelling and froze. There were two military men with machine guns
pointed directly at me. They
were yelling in a foreign language and my mom was quite freaked out as well.
It was the first time
I had ever had a gun of any kind drawn on me. Apparantly it was a
government building and they
were very upset. We took no more pictures but at least we have that one for
posterity. I still
have that little bit of trauma imprint in my psyche and am cautious at any
public building now.
Kay