Do You See What's Happening?

It seems that everything has changed so rapidly when I think about cutting my son’s hair the other day at the salon where I rent a chair. Now, he drives there to see me and takes me out to dinner. Not that long ago, he wasn’t even driving and he was still living with me. Blah, blah, blah, our babies grow up and we miss them.  He knows this, I think.

On one particular day, as we leave the salon together and walk toward my vehicle on the next block, I point out a white van that is always parked on the street. I tell him that I wonder what they use it for. It is a newer model that looks like it would be used for commercial shipping or transporting inmates or some other order of business that seems out of place in a residential neighborhood. He spontaneously came up with the reasonably paranoid deduction that it could have something to do with human traffickers. I say reasonable because that is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it a few weeks earlier. Now, I think it could possibly be facilitated for a wheelchair, but at the time, I was being aware of my surroundings as I was walking to my car after work. Naturally, I was cautious as I spied this van creeping along slowly-before it pulled into the driveway. It literally stopped me in my tracks that day and I had a definite “fight or flight” response as my mind unconsciously went into survival mode until I reached the safety of my own car. I was ready to run for it or kick somebody’s ass.

 It may seem a little odd that I had that reaction and that my son would immediately draw the same conclusion about this van. I suppose that I taught him to notice details and question when something doesn’t quite fit. Obviously, he is informed about the realities of human trafficking. He knows that Minnesota isn’t a safe Midwestern “bubble” where nothing bad ever happens.

Education is the key to safety and I will make sure my kids know the facts however scary they may be. Drug dealers are switching career paths in order to become pimps because it is much more lucrative and the legal consequences almost don’t exist except for the victims. Why is it that the dirtballs who traffic children in the sex trade are getting richer? It is because of DEMAND. There is no supply without demand which is the basics of economics. That’s just how it works in business. If nobody wants it then why would you sell it? There are all kinds of statistics and not many solutions for the problem but all the roads lead to demand when you look at the numbers. How many people are all around you that would go and pay to have sex with a child? Apparently, there are too many because these animals are willing to snatch your daughter right off a street corner, drug her and drive her to another state, never to be seen again.

I start to wonder how it got this bad. There has always been evil in the world but we are becoming more aware of the vices creating it. I think there is a true link to rape culture through pornography. We are desensitized daily with vulgarity much more than people used to be. It used to be hidden. Now it seems that violence and sexuality have some kind of normalized connection on television and especially on the internet where it almost can’t be avoided. To me, the only hope is to tell my kids the truth about what is really going on and hope that it has some meaning. I can make sure that he becomes the kind of man who tries to help instead of hurting.