{"id":37,"date":"2020-03-28T05:06:14","date_gmt":"2020-03-28T05:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/?p=37"},"modified":"2020-03-28T05:06:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T05:06:14","slug":"thursday-march-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/2020\/03\/28\/thursday-march-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday, March 26"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I tweeted about this, but I\u2019m going to flesh it out again here. I\u2019ve been thinking about something that happened two years ago, nearly to the day. My husband\u2019s band was having a little show and I\u2019d left late so I could get her settled with the babysitter. As I was driving to the show, I passed two women in their 20s being harassed by a man in a black trenchcoat, safety vest and big boots. I stopped, rolled down my window and asked if they were okay. They said they didn\u2019t know. I offered to stay with them until they got to safety. Suddenly, the man shouted, \u201cI\u2019m going to count to 3. You better run!\u201d He reached towards his pocket. I told the girls to hop in my car, and I took off. When I looked in my rearview mirror, the man was following me. 
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We were near the police station, so we flagged down a police car. As the police officer was talking to us, the man caught up to the car. He wouldn\u2019t take his hands out of his pockets, and kept menacing the police officer. Suddenly, there were 8 police cars, flashing lights everywhere, and a bunch of police officers chasing the man. We were told to leave the scene, so we did. 
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I gave the women my phone number in case the police needed a statement. One texted the next day to say that the cops didn\u2019t need to talk to me. She mentioned that they had learned their lesson, and would be more careful. Careful how? They\u2019d been walking in daylight, in pairs, right by a police station. Hard to be more careful than that.
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Image caption: Graffiti that reads \u201cwash your hands and your rights and freedoms away.\u201d<\/strong>
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\"Graffiti<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But I empathized because I\u2019m someone who always believes that if I can just find the lesson, I can control the situation. If I can just give something meaning, or change my behaviour, if I can just be good enough or smart enough or aware enough, then I can prevent bad things from happening. Which is, of course, bullshit. Sometimes bad things just happen. Sometimes you\u2019re really good and careful and a pandemic hits. Sometimes you\u2019re walking in daylight and a man chases you down the street. But it is terrifying to say \u201cthere is no lesson here\u201d because it means that you don\u2019t have any control. There\u2019s nothing you can do to fix the situation. 
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I\u2019m trying to apply this lesson (oh no – I said I wouldn\u2019t find a lesson in it and then I did!) to this pandemic. My goal is to stop stress-reading all about how I need to scrub down my groceries and shower after I leave the house and this and that. I will focus on what I can control. I can stay inside. I can wash my hands. I can try to keep Dot from picking up random crap from the ground and putting it in her mouth. I can connect with people and try to offer care to keep others safe. 
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And I can also show patience for little toddler storms, when I have to tell a 2-year-old that she can\u2019t go on the slide because the slide is broken, and she can\u2019t go on the swings because the swings are broken and she can\u2019t go to the playground because the playground is broken, and she breaks a stick in half and says, \u201cMommy fix it, okay?\u201d And I have to tell her that once a stick is broken, you can\u2019t put it back together. So many broken things on our walk today. But we\u2019re jumping in puddles and doing what we can.
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I tweeted about this, but I\u2019m going to flesh it out again here. I\u2019ve been thinking about something that happened two years ago, nearly to the day. My husband\u2019s band was having a little show and I\u2019d left late so I could get her settled with the babysitter. As I was driving to the show, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.kpu.ca\/arley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}