When I hold and hug our new grandchild, Quinlan, all the joy in the world surges through me. This is a new kind of hug for me.
Isn't hugging wonderful? But in today's weird world of hugs, kids can be sent to detention for a casual, friendly hug, like the 13-year-old Illinois girl.
Thank goodness that my daughters have passed the middle-school hug years. I recall Clif and I laughing at the hug-fest following Ocean's 8th grade graduation. Everyone hugged, hugged, hugged, and then hugged some more. But this was in 1988 when hugging was okay.
Sure, there are and always have been, those folks who can't hug without some inappropriateness, and kids can fall victim to these creeps. However, have we become so fearful (and FEARFUL is the key word here) of pervs, lawsuits, terror, disease, the devil and everything else outside of our happy place, that loving kids are punished for being kind?
When Quinlan begins school and I get to drop him off, give him a great big hug before he enters the halls of academe, will the hug-police site me for hugging my grandson?
Will they water board me to force some fake confession of secret thoughts of child abuse? Will I be on the list of dangerous people because I hug?
This place we call earth is so far out of whack that I wonder if sanity and common sense will ever return?
2 years ago
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