A girl came to the door on Tuesday, selling Girl Scout cookies. Oh, what the heck: I bought a few boxes, if for no other reason than that she trod up my 300-foot driveway to ask.
She was only taking orders at this point, and she’ll come back to deliver them. I had to pick the kinds and the amounts, and fill out the order form, and, while the weather was very nice on Tuesday, it’s still on the chilly side. “Come in out of the cold,” said I, “while I decide what I want and fill this out.”
“Um, actually, I’m supposed to stay outside,” the girl replied. Yes, of course she is, and I said as much and went about choosing and writing, with the door open and the young entrepreneuse on the stoop making suggestions.
But it makes me sad about what we’ve made of the world. Our perception of things is very different from how it was when I was Scout girl’s age.
This despite that we were probably too permissive with this sort of thing in the past: it was probably never the best idea for a child to disappear into the house of someone the parents didn’t already know, with whom they didn’t already have an appropriately trusting relationship.
We have long ago left the safe environment of the village. Sigh.
2 comments:
I lament this along with you. It took time for behavior and awareness to catch up with the reality of the changed environment.
It's been a long time since that kind of trust was really the norm. Over 20 years ago, when I was a Girl Scout troop leader and parent of 3 scouts, the local (NJ) organization had caved to parental hysteria and pretty much abolished door to door sales; the girls set up tables in front of supermarkets, called friends of parents and parents of friends on the phone, and that sort of thing. No door to door without an adult lurking at the curb.
I'm sure that the 50's were pure Norman Rockwell, but since then... not so much.
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