Who is the one person you hope isn’t reading your blog? Why?
This blog is largely about my kids, whose identifying info I don’t obfuscate as much as many other parent bloggers do. I see other writers referencing their kids with initials or cute nicknames like Hammerhead. They don’t show photos of their kids’ faces or mention the names of their schools. I feel like they are probably doing something smart that I should do, but instead I keep titling things Amelia With This and Baxter Does That, and I tweet about where we’re going and like their schools on Facebook. I persist in this even though it seems I should be worried, like other parents obviously are, about people cyberstalking and – what’s the terrifying conclusion of that threat? – kidnapping or somehow hurting my kid/s.
But really, I don’t want to live in a subjective universe where there are people scouring the internet for succulent children to abduct and bake in their gingerbread ovens. And I know from hideous experience that Stranger Danger is largely a myth. And then there’s the fact that this site is mostly for my own archiving purposes – so I can own the stuff I post to FB and Twitter – and isn’t a place where I plan to intentionally build readership and thus notoriety. Mix together all of these reasons and sprinkle with some Mother-of-Young-Children laziness, and you will have a beautiful fruit salad of No Change.
So the one person I hope isn’t reading this blog is the person I know exists, though not on every block: I hope there isn’t a rapacious, psychopathic kidnapper reading this blog, for obvious reasons. And I’m going to live – and keep posting – like there isn’t.
