It’s harder than it looks.

This teen, Brittany, defies her mother and travels to Myrtle Beach with friends for spring break. Then she disappears. I will insert here my traditional explanation for all such events: The Fool Killer Got Her. This is a phrase I got from Jay, my late husband, who said it was common, when he was growing up in rural Oregon (and various army camps around the country), to so characterize the bad outcome of really stupid behavior.

We don’t know what happened to her and it doesn’t look good. You know, how, in a typical horror movie, the heroine hears a noise and goes deep into the haunted house alone (practically sucking on a lollipop as she goes) to see what it is? Duh. In the audience, the slowest wit is screaming at her, No, no, DON'T GO!

So how did this kid grow up without (apparently) the merest semblance of self-protective smarts? I have over the years considered myself lucky that I grew up in a neighborhood in Chicago teeming with the homeless, the winos, the petty thieves, the pedophiles, the predators that are (as the lore goes) supposed to be exclusive to large cities. Since I was a tot I was warned about what to expect. By the time I was 14 I had on my own explored not only my immediate neighborhood, but the Loop, the Near North Side, parts of the South Side and all the parks. There wasn’t a pervert I couldn’t spot a block away.

Now I am not suggesting that middle class folk let their kids off in a bad neighborhood and tell them to find their own way home as a lesson, but, surely, it would be prudent to educate them about the low lifes they may encounter as they venture out on their own.

Because I grew up in the middle of chaos and evil, my parents warned me constantly about what to look out for. Some of my friends were also helpful, being more worldly wise from personal experience, and their accounts, more graphic, were immensely valuable.

I think the innocence so many parents would like their children to carry into adult life does not serve them well and sometimes is directly at issue when they go off with a “charmer,” or into the night without looking around, or into any number of questionable situations because they think they are invulnerable. I doubt she’ll be found alive. It is a tragedy. And it was needless.

xx, Teal