As a kid I was taught to yell fire if I was ever in trouble. Something about fire brings all the adults to attention. I never taught this to my own kids, I only taught them screaming was never okay unless they were in trouble. I just think screaming is annoying and senseless unless you are in trouble and need help.
So why am I talking about screaming you might be wondering...if so continue on.
We have an alley behind our house, I've always wanted to live with an alley behind my house. I would see them in older neighborhoods of Arizona and think about how cool it would be to live in one of those houses. So anyways, I have that now and I'm not so sure how cool it really is because of our location. See we live three houses from the school, this means high school students walk down our alley, a lot. Before school, during lunch, after school. While they are walking down our alley the girls like to scream, just for fun. They scream, it's beyond annoying but I've learned to ignore it instead of peeking my head out the door to make sure everything was okay, it always is.
Fast forward a few months.
The girl came home from school asking if I heard anything in the alley. At first I answered with no and she went on to tell me a horrible story of what happened during lunch. That is when I remembered the screaming but thought it was just another day of screaming for the girls of the alley. I didn't even flinch when I heard it because I hear it every weekday.
The story is a sad one and I wish I would have poked my head outside to see if it was just another girl screaming to scream. There's a girl that comes from an abusive home. She ran away and was staying with friends and continued to go to school daily. On this day her parents came for her, finding her walking in the alley. They, the parents, started beating her. Right there in my backyard this girl was being beaten by her parents and I didn't flinch from her screams. The cops were eventually called and she is now in a group home 40 minutes away. She's alone, away from friends and everything she knows because her parents are assholes. This breaks my heart , and I can't help but think how it could be different for her. Had I went out to see what the screaming was about maybe she wouldn't have had to endure another beating from her parents. It's like the boy that cried wolf but the girl that screamed in our alley.
So PLEASE teach your kids the power of screaming. There is joyful screaming when you hear good news and during a water balloon fight, I get that. But you shouldn't be screaming in an alley unless you need help. Teach your kids how to be safe because it's a big mean world out there.
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