Hi,
Just wanted to mention a site I like,
I think it’s a valuable tool for any damsel in defense. Since I’ve been talking about children a lot, I remembered this is a great site to go to if you want to protect your children mentally as well. It breaks down everything in the movie, by profanity, sexuality, and violence, and rates each on a scale. Spoiler alert.
So about 7 years back, long before the damsel in defense blog was born, I came home to my college apartment with a huge case of pepper spray I’d gotten off of ebay. I planned to give one out to each of the girls in my complex. Then, because I’m a self defense weirdo, I decided that if I was going to give these to the girls, I should probably make sure it works. I went outside with it, and meant to spray it down into a corner, but the wind had other ideas. It hit me full in the face..
And you know what? I’m glad it did because knowing exactly how someone who is pepper sprayed would feel really gives me insight into how and whether to use it. It taught me respect for properly and conscientiously using and storing it.
Speaking of which, one of my brother’s friends left a keychain (disguised) pepper spray on my mom’s desk once. I was holding my niece and saw mom shoot out of the den coughing. As she passed me, she told me to get the phone. I assume she’d been having a coughing fit and didn’t think anything of going in. I had the baby turned into my shoulder, luckily, because what had happened is my mom had thought it was perfume and sprayed it, causing a cloud to rise around the phone. I immediately tucked the baby’s head into my shirt, and ran out coughing and bleary eyed. I knew exactly what had happened because it wasn’t the first time.
We all know about gun safety, and you wouldn’t leave a gun lying around for a stranger or infant to pick up. It’s the same with pepper spray or any other self defense tool. If you own it, you are responsible for it, for keeping it on your person and secure, away from little eyes or hands, and heaven forbid you leave it with a stranger.
It’s nice for some women that defense items have gotten a lot cuter, pink, and can be disguised as lipsticks or perfume. But on the other hand, they don’t have the same obvious weapon look to them and could harm other women (Especially the perfume ones) and children who might think they are toys.
Bottom line, no matter how cute it is, it’s a weapon and deserves respect. In fact, the less it looks like a weapon, the more careful you have to be to never let it out of your hands.
Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting you pepperspray yourself in the face. This is just my experience and opinion, and hopefully you can learn from my experience and never experience it yourself. I’m not responsible for anything you do or don’t do.
As you know Damsel in Defense blog is pretty hung up on kid safety.
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=21904373&nid=148
Just wanted to give the link to the news article I mentioned in the protecting kids post. So glad there were people watching this man who saw what he was doing. We really all can make a difference by looking out for the kids around us. Being a parent is tough, and it’s easier to point fingers at unruly kids than to help them. But we just need to remember these kids are the future for all of us, they will grow up with our kids.
I used to be a lot more judgemental, I used to look at kids running by themselves in unsafe places and just think ‘how could you have more kids than you could protect, or afford?’. But that wasn’t solving anything
Then I started keeping an eye out when I saw a small child alone in a crowded area. I’ve had multiple experiences where I caught someone following them, and when they turned back and saw me, they left. The child found the parent and the parent was none the wiser about what could have happened.
And parents can be defensive, I know this well from being a lifeguard. I would walk through the infant area, picking up kids who were facedown in the pool, drowning, because they’d been left in their lifejacket. What parents weren’t realizing was that the lifejacket, once wet, makes it hard for an infant to regain their footing, and can actually hold them face down. I would wade through, picking one up after the other and setting them on their feet, and I would often be yelled at by parents. ‘Get your hands off my baby!’. Sometimes they apologized when they realized I’d saved their baby’s life, sometimes not. But it got me used to the idea of no gratitude.
I get the same sometimes when helping a kid find their parent. I never touch the child, merely offer help and keep an eye out. Even so, sometimes when they find the parent and they see me, I get nasty glares. I’m guessing they just feel guilty. Or embarrassed. But I figured out years ago that it’s not for them, it’s for the kids. If I have to make a few people mad to save a child’s life, I’ll do it.
Something to think about if you decide to put a child monitor on. If it’s one of those that alerts you when a child is out of a certain radius, just remember that your own EYES should never let them out of that radius. Remember how much can happen in the SECONDS you don’t watch. It’s really too bad that society is like this now. People used to watch out for children. People used to be able to have confidence in taking their children out. It just isn’t like that anymore.
I think like pepper spray, there are pros and cons to one of those monitors.
Cons: If it encourages an attitude that it’s okay to let a kid run until he is out of range, then it is just a bad idea. If it makes anyone feel more secure about their kids to the extent that they relax their watch, it’s a bad idea. Also, It’d be easy to grab off a kid and throw away.
Pros: It’s insurance against the worst, to some degree. I would prefer something with tracking so if someone picked up the kid and ran off, I could find them. I also like the alarmed backpacks I saw at this website. I’ve never owned one but I like that they are hard to pull off and are super loud and easy for the kid to equip. THE MAIN PRO I think is that perhaps a child predator would be deterred by the monitor. To me, they look obvious, maybe it would make a kid slightly less likely to be preyed on.
I really do believe that defense tools can be an asset, as long as the mindset of the person using them is right.
Damsel in Defense 