REALITY. CHECK.

I've led a sheltered life. Big Boss Man will attest to this, and reminds me of it when I read an upsetting story about kids smoking pot or 12 year old girls having sex and getting pregnant. I'm naive in the worst sense of the word; the slightest things shock me.

That being said.

We went to a mall tonight and walked around. It was my birthday today, but my "party" (gambling and mayhem at the casino) isn't until tomorrow night, so we went just to get out tonight. We got The Boys new shoes (can you say "stinky" and "holey"? Those are the only two words that can describe their old shoes). Then we just walked around, and not people watching is impossible when you're in a mall on a Friday night.

What I saw put a fear in my heart that I've never experienced before.

I didn't fear for my life in a physical sense. I didn't feel the need to have my hand hidden in my purse, resting on the grip of a Kahr PM9. I did fear for the futures of my children. As we were sitting down to save a table at the food court, two girls (couldn't have been older than 13, maybe) jogged just past our table to a few older guys. They were dressed as I've never seen girls that young dressed before, and one of them spoke up with a "Hey!" shouted to the guys. "Do you want my friend's number?"

Huh?

Did I miss something?

"YEAH!" the guys said back, and the girl went on to ask if they had cell phones. Of course, they did, because children of all ages have cell phones in contemporary times {insert eye rolley thing here}. She rattled off the number like water off a duck, and then her and her friend sauntered away, butts twitching like they'd been paid to shake what their mama gave them...at 13!! I think my heart may have actually stopped right then and there.

So BBM came back to the table. He proceeded to give me CPR to jumpstart my ticker. I told him what I'd witnessed, and he acted surprised...not surprised that it had happened, but surprised that I seemed so shocked by it all. Obviously I haven't been to the mall in...well, years.

So we continue to eat (and people watch), and we see so many things. So many things that I can't even write them all down here, as I really don't want to relive the experience. But I do have a couple questions:

1. What, exactly, are young people expressing when they choose to wear dark eyeshadow and black eyeliner that, quite honestly, makes them look like football players who don't quite know how to put glare paint on their cheeks? I don't get it. And I'm not just talking girls here...some of the young men we saw could give drag queens lessons on application. I get that they're individuals, and they're exercising their right to be an individual, and they're expressing "who they are", but who does that? Who are they? If their expressions are shining through, I ain't gettin' it.

2. If children are so insistent on being individuals, why did we see groups (and I'm not talking one or two kids, I'm talking groups of five, six, seven kids) ALL. WITH. THE. SAME. HAIRCUTS??? Isn't that a little hypocrisy, or am I just old? It was something I'd never seen before...all of them the same with maybe a difference in hair color...you know, some pitch black, some bleached white. Because that's individual.

3. Who on God's green Earth is sitting at home with these kids, telling them they look "great" or "nice" or "cute" or "hip" or whatever the word of the year is, packing them in the car, and dropping them off at a busy mall for the evening??? Is having a night alone without the blaring music of your pre-teen, tween, or teenager really so important that you'd risk ditching them at a haven for sex-hungry predators? Because from what I saw tonight, sex-hungry predators are not just dirty old men watching little girls from afar...now they're kids that are the same age as our children, going to the same school. My soul shivers at the very thought of it.

What can parents do? I am a member of a couple mothers' groups, and I can honestly say that NOT ONE of the women in these groups would let their kids hang out in an environment like this. So why are there so many children still at the mall?? Why is it so hard to stop this 'epidemic of individualism' from taking over? I want to take my children out of school. I'll home school them until they are old enough to get their certificate, at which time they'll be shipped off to the military, where they'll learn respect and discipline for 4 years. Either that, or I'm going to start a town for people who don't want their children to succumb to the temptations of this day and age. You have to fill out an application to get within city limits, and I'll have a One Strike and You're Out policy. No bad apples to spoil the barrel. Since neither of these options are viable, I'd like to end with a thought (or another one, since this post has been nothing but my thoughts): I'm all for expressing yourself. Go get a pencil and some drawing paper. Get a paint brush and a giant canvas. Not artistic? Grab a guitar, or maybe a piano or an accordion, if that turns your spokes. Music not your forte?

GET. A. BLOG.

You can express yourself all you want.