Survival of the Fittest

I think I truly started to believe in the old adage "survival of the fittest" when my Mother-In-Law, bless her over-protective heart, freaked out when she saw me let my daughter check on her friends more than five houses down.  My daughter was about 10  or so and quite old enough to ride her bike around our neighborhood, and unbeknownst to my MIL had been doing so for quite some time already. As long as she always answers her cell phone when I call and calls me when she changes her location we're good.  This isn't about how old you think a kid should be when they get a cell phone (that's your call) but just so everyone knows...I feel better when she has one, I don't have to yell (is that some kind of Yankee thing?) or worse, drive around to find her, and quite frankly I can call from the couch (awesome) and say "It's time to come home, so clean up whatever mess y'all made, say thank you and get your butt home".  It's easier for everyone involved...mainly me.  Anyway, my Mother-In-Law says to my husband and me "you guys aren't going to just let her go like that are you?  I mean, aren't you going to watch her?  What if she has to cross the street?!"  My husband, not missing a beat, looks up and calmly says "Mom, we've done all we can to teach her how to cross a street; if she can't do something as simple as looking both ways by now...well, then we've failed".  Very true! Two things crossed my mind at that moment...first - could we have failed that badly as parents? Second - how in the HELL did my Mother-In-Law raise two boys and not throw herself into traffic from the stress and worry of it all?  I've heard all about their shenanigans. And while I'm wondering these things the only picture I had flitting through my brain was of a pack of gazelles leaping through an open field...ahhhh, so beautiful...except for one; one gazelle, one slow, lazy gazelle...that was about to get eaten!  I'm pretty sure I saw slight grins on the faces of the other gazelles knowing that they would go on to get good jobs and marry some computer engineer...huh? Oh, I totally meant make it to the next watering hole!  <blush> I don't want my daughter to be the lazy gazelle!! I want her to lead the herd and have that stupid grin on her adorable face! We can only hope that we've done enough though. And that's when I truly, truly understood that sometimes, not necessarily all the time, cosmic forces try to clean house and if you're thinking of doing something stupid to get yourself onto TNN's Worlds Dumbest you should remember that it may be Spring Cleaning Day and YOU'RE the one not looking both ways before crossing the street.  Needless to say, my kid is still around and has yet to show us that we failed thank God.