Stodgy Jane

A few thoughts that make me sound stodgy.

A gentleman of my acquaintance, Catholic and married for many years, brought something to my attention. A local free paper, distributed on public transit, has been running full page ads for a dating service that caters, in part, to married people. I don't read that paper and so hadn't seen them. He was incensed that ads are encouraging people to have affairs. You know, I agree with him. Gay people getting married won't have any impact on heterosexual marriage but ads in mainstream papers telling married people to fool around might. Ad revenues are down but surely papers can do better than this!

A week or so ago I was staffing a booth near an alley; it was a dead end, too narrow for cars, just a walkway between a building and a wall. Three kids passed the table and went into the alley. Two boys and a girl, all looked around 12 or 13. I turned to the parent at the booth with me and said "no good can come of that." She agreed, so off I went to be nosy. Only one of the boys and the girl were visible, engaged in an introductory Biology 101 activity. The kids looked about the same age and it looked consensual, but mindful that teen pregnancy rates are up I yelled down the alley "Hey, what are you guys doing?" They dashed out and when I left about 30 minutes later they were sitting on the monkey bars at a nearby school playground. Apparently I have become an old busybody.