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My Daughter Asked if there were Police at Woodstock

By
Real Estate Agent with Keller Williams Capital Properties DC AB15253

I just wrote a blog for the public about going to the movies at Strathmore Hall here in Bethesda. It is a local performing arts center and for a week in the summer they host movies on the lawn for free. The food concessions donate a portion of their profits to the National Institutes of Health Childrens' Charities, so there is a good feel to the evening.

I dropped my fifteen year old daughter off at Strathmore this evening to meet several of her friends and see the movie Twilight.  I promise you that my daughter and her friends are good kids.  I had a run in with the police at the very start of the evening because I wanted to drop her off on the main road (an 8 lane high way with a median down the middle) right at the entrance to the property so that I knew she wasn't walking down the road by herself. The police had the entrance blocked off, so I wanted to drop her off in front of the police car. The policeman started waving me past but I stopped anyway because I really was determined to know that my daughter was on the grounds of Strathmore where she could safely wait to meet her friends. I tried to explain to the policeman why I was stopping, but he threatened me with a $250 fine and 3 points for not following his instructions. OKAY!  At least my daughter was certainly going to be safe for the evening with all those vigilant police on the job.

The movie started at 8:10 and at 9:40 my daughter called to ask me to come get her.  Any group of kids who were talking on the lawn outside while watching the movie were thrown out by the police. No warning - just an immediate eviction.  She and her three friends have been tossed.  Groups of 15 year old girls are certainly a threat to social stability at an open air free movie for teens, and require the police to take immediate action. 

Alright - what does this have to do with Woodstock? When we got home my daughter and I were watching tv together. There was an ad for a retrospective of Woodstock with pictures of the chaos that we all celebrate as that special kind of last gasp of Camelot and the 60s. My daughter, who had just been thrown out of an open air movie geared to teens, was amazed by those photos and she asked me, "Weren't there any police at Woodstock?"

How have we gotten from Woodstock to this? to three speed cameras within two blocks of my house? to a patient acceptance of every invasion of our privacy? What happened to the spirit of Woodstock?

Comments (2)

Jim Valentine
RE/MAX Realty Affiliates - Gardnerville, NV

They are forgetting about the freedoms of our country ... and their youth.  If we get too harsh with police control ... we might as well have federal health coverage.

Aug 19, 2009 04:13 PM
Patricia Kennedy
RLAH@Properties - Washington, DC
Home in the Capital

Lise, I love this post!  I thought I was the only one getting freaked out by this stuff.  So many people just do not get the privacy thing at all.  

Aug 20, 2009 09:55 AM