Mother, May I?

So, I was looking through the TLS threads (again) and I noticed that on the Ding Bar thread (referenced in my last post) someone posted the following:

Dear University of Houston,

Thank you for your ding. Now I can return that Kevlar jacket and helmet.

Houston Area Homicide Map Jan 2010 - Dec 2010
http://img706.imageshack.us/f/houstona.jpg/

I was admittedly intrigued, so I clicked the link. Wow. There are a LOT of murders in Houston. I don't live in Pleasantville, USA or anything, but GEEZ!

So then I got really curious. I mean, I watch that show The First 48 all of the time. On each show they profile 2 murders in two different cities. I feel like at least once in every four episodes or so one of the murders has happened in Dallas (the overwhelming majority take place in Miami). And since I'm moving to Dallas in the next few months...well, you get the idea.

I'm going to say this right off the bat: I am a huge scaredy-cat. My mom raised me thinking that literally every man on the street was a rapist or sick-o just waiting to steal a cute little girl for nefarious reasons. Every dark window had a crazy guy outside waiting for you to turn off the lights so he could break in. And if you pumped the gas of a car before starting it you WOULD blow up.

(That third thing really doesn't have anything to do with violent crime, but you can see the extremes she took.)

And yes, my mom grew up in Guatemala, where you do have to be, at least marginally, more cautious than here. But when you get down to it, she's just a crazy, paranoid woman. Unfortunately, that paranoia has started to manifest in me to the teeniest, tiniest degree. And so I google searched the term "Dallas homicide map" with a certain sense of impending doom.

Say whaaaaaaaaat? That map is all blue!!!!!! Thankfully, when I zoomed in I noticed it really wasn't all that bad...there seems to be a very clear "buffer zone" around the campus, at least.

Well, anyway, needless to say I will NOT be showing this particular map to my mother ever. Never ever. Because then she would a) not let me go, and b) lock me up in my room so that no crazy people from Dallas hitchhike the 1200 miles to my hometown and try to "cut" me.