I happened to catch on the morning news that the city has added the geographical locations of “registered sex offenders” to a map, accessable on the city web site.

This is fine. You know, it’s trendy to keep track of sex offenders. Of course, I personally am more worried about people convicted of drunk driving, since they are much more likely to cause me harm, but whatever. I’m sure somebody else may want to know where everyone who has an overdue library book lives.

Anyway.

I look at the map, and of course it is a map of the entire city. And I thought “gee, there are a lot of blue dots.” Blue dots are the Offenders.

Then I zoomed in.

There is a blue dot four houses away from mine. Now that’s cutting it a little close to home. Another five live within a mile.

Now this is a tricky subject, and I don’t want to seem like I’m going all Chicken Little about this, cuz I’m not. I know that some people have been required to register as sex offenders for things that you or I may not really be that upset about: perhaps a 19 year old male who was convicted of having sex with his 17 1/2 year old girlfriend. Or something like that. I dunno. I know that courts sometimes hand out sentences that don’t always make sense, especially if you are missing the details of the case.

And also, I can tell you that I have dealt with parents who are considered sex offenders, when I’ve had their kids in foster care. Trust me, you wouldn’t know unless you read the case file, most of the time.

But still, it’s hard to describe the feeling, when I pulled up the map and realized just how close this “somebody” was living to our house. Our town is full of rental properties, with a high turnover rate, so who knows if they are even still there. If you watch the news you hear surprisingly often about places where the registry is out of date, and people that move without notifying authorities.

And I won’t relax very much the next time the kids take off on their bicycles up the street.