This is not a very recent pic. It is from the moominbeach sometime a week or so ago or whatever. Maybe from one of the nights npJane and I had cocktails on Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench while watching the sun set.

This afternoon, the GG took a porterization nap and then we porterized ourselves out at Dexter’s Pub. We haven’t been there all summer and we weren’t immediately recognized by the owner although our waitress definitely remembered the Porters when they came in. Oh, yeah, I know you guys. Indeed.

And so we are back on the Planet Ann Arbor. I had a great time at Dexter’s Pub tonight but I could not outlast our friends who are on a different schedule than we are. I don’t necessarily go to bed at 10:00 PM but I need to be chilling out by then. In a place that isn’t as noisy as a pub. Like my house.

I’m not sure I can capture all of the conversation tonight. As acute as my hearing is, I couldn’t hear all of it because of all the background noise. I do know that when people try to say that “things” aren’t like they used to be, meaning they are much worse nowadays, they are probably not remembering the bad stuff that happened when we were children. Riding your bike alone as a kid was definitely not any safer when I was a kid than it is now. It also wasn’t any more dangerous. The key thing is to teach kids to keep their wits about them and NEVER talk to strangers.

In my case, I was about eight and on an OCD-type mission to ride my bike around the block 20 times after dinner. On about the 18th time, a MAN in a noisy car pulled up next to me and said, “Hey kid, do you want a ride to the Pictney(?) Shoberg. Years later I realized he was probably saying “picture show”, but at the time, there was a funeral home in town with a name that sounded like what he said. I FREAKED OUT, jumped off my bike and ran like hell with it to my house two doors down and into the garage. He was yelling “hey kid” the whole time. I got into the house and out the back window I saw him screaming down the alley looking for me.

I didn’t tell my parents about this until I was an adult. My dad was the bank manager when I was a kid and knew a lot of the police and if I had told him, the police would certainly would have been johnny on the spot.

All that said, a judge I am acquainted with in Ann Arbor once said that child abductions by strangers are extremely rare. I believe her but still.

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