Among today’s news stories (Lindsay Lohan possibly going back to the slammer, protesters taking to the streets of Egypt again, and everything in between) was this one.
Yes, a woman gave birth to a baby in a toilet – at a circus, no less – and left the infant to die in the cold water. Stories like this always shock me, even though I should be used to them by now. The question I ask myself whenever I read them is this: Were there always this many crazy people out there or do we just hear about them now, because there’s so much more media?
I was talking about this with Michael the other day. We both grew up in leafy suburbs within an hour of NYC. We were sheltered, admittedly. And our young minds were definitely not on the news of the day. Still, wouldn’t we have heard if another kid was abducted? If a neighbor had fired gunshots into a crowded shopping center? If the woman down the street had given birth to a baby in a toilet?
“I think those things were happening,” said Michael, “but there was no CNN or Internet to tell us about it.”
“We had telephones,” I reminded him. “When something bad happened, people called each other. It was known as gossip.”
He shrugged. “Maybe you’re right and there are more crazy people now.”
We couldn’t decide, not definitively. Does anyone else have thoughts? All I really know is that these stories make being a writer more difficult than it used to be; nothing I could make up would be stranger than what really goes on in our world.
Sorry for the longwinded response – I think it’s a combination of both. I think we have the same percentage of crazy people now, but in a larger population, living in tightly packed cities where people are not able to keep an eagle eye on their children and loved ones to the same degree they used to – there were latch key kids when my parents where children, for example, but it was not the norm like it is now. This drives more people with issues to crazy actions and creates more opportunity. I also think that Michael is right about not having the internet when we were younger. The internet puts all of this news at even children’s fingertips. I was a child in Burbank when the Hillside Stranglers and the Night Stalker were committing their murders. I wouldn’t have known anything about it if my parents hadn’t given my sister and I a very specific “stranger talk” when things started hitting a little too close to home – only then did I start paying closer attention to the news and such than I probably should have at that age, and only because the fact that they were scared, scared me. A child today would have leaned about it already from internet news on their homepage.
It’s interesting to me that you and Mike were talking about this and my husband and I were.
We both grew up in the same way as you describe. We went back and forth on this topic the other night.
The only thing we agreed upon was that so many more things are just acceptable now and there is no shame for anything. I have found that shame back in the day made people keep things quiet and or not do them. Does that make sense to you? Not that I am saying some of those things should have shame associated with them but it was a deterient.
I do recall my parents always talking about the ‘beware of strangers offering you candy, talking to strangers’ etc. Something may have gone on but we were never told unless we heard the whispers. There was no internet or constant news. Although as a kid i wouldn’t have watched the news anyway.
As a high school student you were ostracized if you became pregnant and removed from school. Now you get a front page photo on People magazine and an MTV show. Being bad and having street “cred” is cool. When we were kids it was enough to be punished and you were that “bad” kid.
I could go on but you know what I mean here.
So are there really more now or is it just that this behavior is more acceptable? Do people just not feel shame anymore or taught right from wrong? Do they grow up feeling entitled to do everything and anything they want?
Great question and if I had the answer I think I’d be very rich!
Hopefully, by the end of this day, you’ll get a LOT of well-thought-out and insightful comments like those first two from Kristen and Margaret.
Like them, I do believe it’s a blend of factors, and we too talk about these things in a general way at home. Certainly the multi-multi-media is all over everything today, hungry for the latest news blast, and bad news always sells sells sells. And we were certainly verrry sheltered as kids…our parents had the decency to discuss such awful matters in private, and clearly had concerns for our well-being. There are certain “industries” that appear to have flourished in the interim, such as pornography (an old friend with whom I played in a Fantasy Baseball League back in the ’90s was a big internet geek from the beginning…he told me back then that THE engine that fueled the internet, by far, was porn). And that can be applied to sex slavery, not to mention other slavery…the movie “Taken,” for all its thrilling action and happy ending, appeared to me to be deeply and frighteningly real. People I know in law enforcement have confirmed as much.
Now…not to sound like the cranky old conservative (altho’ I’m sure I will)…one of the problems that we have inherited unintentionally with our massive immigration from EVERY corner of the world (not just south of the border) is that we have inherited many many cultural mores that simply are incompatible, if not incomprehensible, with and to the nation in which we grew up. Killing your child because they have strayed too far from the path of Islam? Selling your child into sex/slavery? Bribery for every business transaction? There is no one finger to point in any one direction. Of course, it’s easy for me to point out a whole lotta issues, and have no concrete answers. And sadly, to quote Pink Floyd, given all the exposure these things have been given already, we appear to have become “comfortably numb.”
Someone who is involved in city planning once told me that crime rates (especially in cities) rose dramatically when TV became popular. The old women who used to sit and look out the windows all evening, now were watching TV. Makes sense.
I think it is a combination of things, also. I think another factor is that things were hushed up a lot. I don’t mean protecting children, like you were talking about, I’m thinking more of people hiding bad things.
this story reminded me of the time our house was searched by some sort of law enforcement people. My parents rented rooms to college girls and a baby was found abandoned, so they came to look for clues. that was probably pre 1965.
To add on one more thing, esp. taking note of what Melissa said. Certainly, TV has had a negative effect. But what of the nutbags that shoot up a crowd or a school or god-knows-where? You can say that movies have made the anti-hero into a hero, which I think has been stated…but today’s biggest culprit may well be the internet. You don’t even have to leave your house or your hovel. At your fingertips is a whole wide WORLD of websites that are more extreme than anything we’re likely to imagine…and it serves to reinforce the extreme views of a person or people out on the fringes. Why bother to argue with anyone, when your point of view can be bolstered and “super-sized” out in cyber-land? Sometimes at work, I’ll roam somewhere and click on something to get to a site that may be a bit ‘out there,’ and they deny me access to it. I’m actually glad. It also makes me think twice about what I was doing in the first place.
Kristen, you make a good point about latch key kids. When I was growing up in the ’50s, most mothers stayed home and kept a close eyes on their children. Were there bad apples then? There had to be. But the parents took a more hands on approach. I remember one girl in the neighborhood who was sent to “a place.” (That’s what they called it, since there was a euphemism for every unpleasant word back then.) Hopefully she got the help she needed and went on to lead a productive life. I was also given “the stranger talk” by my parents. In fact, I was in fourth grade and walking with a friend when a strange-looking guy stopped his car, asked us for directions and told us to get in the car. My friend and I KNEW something was off, but the hilarious part is we each ran to our own houses instead of sticking together and running to one house! Our parents called the police and reported the guy.
So you and your husband were having the same conversation, Peg? We started having it recently after the shooting in Tucson, but we’ve had it many times. The “shame” aspect in society – or lack thereof – is an interesting point. Teenage pregnancy, as you mention, was grounds for being sent away and never seen again! Now it’s the stuff of red carpets. So yes, bad behavior is not only out in the open but often rewarded. And there’s definitely more of a sense of entitlement these days. So true. But I think that’s different from actual mental illness. Women who try to kill their children are clearly nuts. Kids who go on shooting sprees are loony tunes. They need help and they’re not getting it and we’re all paying the price.
Yes, you do sound like a cranky conservative, Dave. (Said with love.) I don’t think immigration created the Unibomber or the kid who shot Giffords or the mother who gave birth to the baby in the toilet. Are there culturally varied mores in our melting pot of a country? Absolutely. Are our prisons filled with gang members and sex slave operators and such? No doubt. But that’s comparing criminals with crazies, and I think there’s a difference. The Internet seems to play the biggest role in this, as you note in your second comment. Anybody can have access to anything! As you say, you can have your crazy point of view validated with the click of a mouse. Really scary.
Yup, things were hushed up back in the day, Melissa. Now it’s the opposite – we’re bombarded by bad/weird news. And I’m sure there are a lot of copycats who get ideas from people they see on TV. I remember one killer (can’t remember which) said he read a lot of Stephen King before going on a killing spree, and as a result there were all sorts of people decrying violence in books and movies; music too. But the seed of mental illness has to be there to begin with. That must have been creepy, btw, when the cops came to search your house!
I agree about the latch key kids. another aspect of that is that teens and preteens need to talk at the time they are ready. If they have a problem or disturbing thought at 3 PM, and no one is there for them, they usually won’t wait until 5 or so and bring it up.
Right. If there’s no one to listen, it must be very hard for a young person to keep it together – a very sad fact of modern life.
If “Supernatural” on the CW has taught me anything, the only time people do crazy sh*t is when they’re possessed by demons. I think there’s always been crazy people though. It’s probably better then it used to be…like the Middle Ages :O