Sex talk did not impress this child

All the media talk about Catholic priests, predatory web sites and parents afraid to let their children bike to school has brought up a memory from my childhood.

It's too bad there's so much fear out there. So much fear that parents often don't allow kids to bike places. Obesity is on the rise.

Is the problem really that bad, compared to traffic hazards, for instance?

I remember biking to school when I was a kid. We didn't even wear helmets. Not that I am recommending being a "dare devil," even though a lot of young people are dare devils. I wasn't the daring kind. Helmets weren't really worn back then. They should have been, but I survived.

I even survived Grand Street, in Pullman, WA. Grand St. was horrible back then. 4 lanes of "fast moving" traffic and no shoulder.

Now there's a "bike path" alternative. Some things are better now than they were back then.

As for sexual predators, the statistical odds of an encounter are far less than just regular traffic hazards.

Still I remember an encounter. I hadn't thought about it for a long time, but all this recent talk in the local media has brought back the memory.

One weekend I was riding to a nearby town to have a picnic in the city park. Maybe I was in early high school, but my memory is a bit foggy.

Anyway, this fellow, in grubby overalls, struck up a conversation with me. Of course, "grubby overalls" - the stereotype.

He was a construction worker. Working on one of the dams on the Snake River. They were building dams back then so a lot of the workers lived in the area.

Being a kid, I started asking a bunch of questions. I was interested in dam construction.

How thick is the concrete? How does the coffer dam work? How deep are the foundations? When do they start putting the generators in?

Instead of being a "font of information" about the dams, this man I met in the park just invited me into a nearby restroom.

I wondered what he was trying to show me; concrete work, pluming examples, electrical conduit?

Instead, he pointed to the nasty graffiti on the stalls. The sexual graffiti. He started asking, "Do you do this?" "Have you done that?"

I just said "no" and "huh?"

I didn't know what to make of the conversation so I left.

He wasn't giving me very much information about the dams on the Snake River. I wasn't interested in the graffiti, it just seemed kind of dirty, or nasty, to me. The dam construction interested me more, so I just left. I got on my bicycle and rode away. The bicycle can be a good escape.

It didn't seem like that big a deal.

Back when I was a kid, a lot of things traumatized me. I was even in therapy for different reasons, but this incident in the park didn't even come up in the therapy.

Sometimes I wonder if the fear is worse than the problem. Not that the problem is good, it's just that the fear can really be traumatizing and crippling.

I recently read an article about a child having to go through some court proceeding as they were trying to prosecute a sex abuse case. The proceeding was traumatic, in itself, especially with the kid being cross examined by the defense attorneys.

That trial resulted in a hung jury. It was declared a miss trial. Putting the child through that proceeding for no outcome. The article even said that there may be another trial. It was disturbing to read.

There are a lot of what one might call "predatory factors" out there in society.

Greed can take many forms be it the appetite for sexuality, or materialism, for that matter. Even the word "predatory" has several meanings. Ever heard of "predatory pricing" or "predatory business practices?"

It's always good to be careful and use common sense, but when fear starts to rule, everyone needs to stop and take a deep breath, so to speak.