Danger! Danger! High Voltage!

Here's an idea for you - nothing is innately dangerous.

It's perhaps a bit philosophical but perhaps also can be of use when we look at the world. Think about it: nothing that is thought of as 'dangerous' was dangerous unless we said it was. I've been reading Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid recently and it's full of stuff that wasn't dangerous until we said it was. Smoking for instance. But it's also not just a matter of science. Some things we know are a risk to us which we thought before were good for us. We progress. But we also construct danger. We ascribe danger to phenomena that could be thought of otherwise.

Today I encountered a danger feared more than most.

I was out shopping with my mother, a wonderful experience that has not happened for a number of years and was without the stress, strain and ultimate sweat for the fact that we both found what we needed in the first two shops we entered - delightful. The afternoon was topped off with a wonderful hot chocolate with more chocolate in a brownie, wonderful - but that's not the point.

The point was, that I went to the loo before heading home, again a comment of anecdotal irrelevance. BUT: as I wandered to the cubicle I noticed to my right was a man at a urinal with his willy in one hand and his child's hand in his other. The man was so conscious of child-snatchers that could seemingly attack at any moment, that he couldn't even leave his child unarmed and vulnerable for the time it took to pee.

Lollipops! 

Child snatchers only exist in reruns of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang around Christmas time. Well, they do exist in 'real life' too, but we must be honest - our fascination is a force multiplier. We are fascinated by them to such an extent that Madeline remains in top spot on the hardback non-fiction bestsellers list for another week. Child snatchers existed as much in a time when children were free to go and build treehouses like dear Bryson in Des Moines in 1950s America, but now in the face of such 'danger' we must go and chain our children to our palms as we urinate in shopping centres instead of letting them have fun.

Being critical of danger, is not itself critically dangerous. Sometimes we have to keep things in perspective. I leave with a closing thought:

More people were killed in the year after 9/11 on the roads chock-a-block with cars for their new fear of flying than were killed in 9/11 itself.