City Phobia

I liked both versions of Adventures in Babysitting but am annoyed by the "city phobia" they display.

Most citizens of highly developed countries live in cities or the surrounding suburbs. So many viewers of Adventures in Babysitting may live in the country but most of them live near cities. Most of us in this board live within a comparatively short driving time of many thousands or even millions of persons.

And the bad side of that is that most of us live within easy travel distance of a lot of bad persons and criminals. And a lot of pessimists make a big deal out of it. But even though most of us have lived all our lives within easy striking distances of at least one serial killer at a time, none of us who reads this has been murdered yet, and our probability of being murdered during our life times is very small.

Jenny seemed horrified by the idea of a fourteen year old boy going to the city alone at night. It's not a good idea, but hardly a horrifying one. Didn't Jenny care about all the fourteen year old (and younger) boys (and girls) who don't visit big cities but have lived in them all their lives?

Of course some of those city kids might be not so much be in danger from big city dangers as a part of big city dangers. As a resident of the Philadelphia area I remember thirteen year old Michael Kallinger who assisted in his father's crime spree. Of course the Kallingers usually went to the suburbs to commit their crimes.

When I was sixteen I started taking the train by myself to center city Philadelphia to visit the central branch of the free library every Saturday. The central branch is at Logan Square which has a fountain that my parents used to take my big sister to play in when she was a baby. Yes, my parents were evil enough to live in a dangerous center city with a little baby!

Today the girls at the nearby John W. Hallohan Catholic Girls' High School jump into that fountain on the last day of school (curiously, the school mascot is Mickey Mouse). I have sometime seen them (some as young as fourteen) walking in their school uniforms, some perhaps to get public transportation to their homes in the "safe" suburbs, others perhaps going to their homes in the "dangerous" city.

My family lived in the Germantown section of Philadelphia until I was eleven. I used to walk to the school with my siblings. It was about half a mile there and half a mile back. With the long lunch period we used to walk home for lunch and then back to school. So we walked about two miles a day through a city neighborhood without any trouble. The worst danger was when trucks turned the corner fast and went on the sidewalk. I learned to stand well back from the corner.

Kids converged near the school and there the authorities took measures to protect them. Members of the safety patrol told the kids when it was or wasn't safe to cross the streets. You know, big, mature, competent twelve-year old boys.

I started going to the local library branch when I as about seven or eight, and soon went there every day after school. More walking the city streets, this time alone.

So my personal childhood experiences in a big city make me think that Jennie overreacted to a fourteen year old boy going to the city alone.