I Love Children
My last post here was an admonishment against adults who are so single-mindedly fanatical about something that they readily expose children to the harsh realities of it unnecessarily. Well, the only responses I got were enthusiastic defences of single-minded fanaticism unrestricted by the concerns of children! Well, I thought it might be safer to post about bad things [i]I[/i] was exposed to, which were definitely wrong, and showcase how foolish that is in retrospect and how damaging it can be to kids in any era.
[b]Nuclear conflagration[/b]
I'm sure a lot of Generation X went through this. I guess I was born in the sweet-spot of Gen X to be aware of the perils of strategic nuclear weapons and young enough to overblow it. Now I can't blame the mass media for allowing me to know this, anymore than millennials could have been kept oblivious to 9/11. However, my grade 6 teacher had this... this... theme about how we can perpetuate ourselves beyond nuclear annihilation. We couldn't preserve ourselves, he believed, so we made a time capsule. So, we bought in materials for this time capsule to tell whomever comes later what we were. One kid brought a comic book, and the teacher showed the depictions of violence and he quoted the beneficiaries with "boy, are we ever glad this civilization is over!". And so that's what we were ready for: the end of our civilization.
So he researched time capsules and learned that burying it so many feet below the ground in a hermetically sealed box should preserve most things that we would put in it, "unless a missile lands in the middle of the school grounds." 35 years later, these words stuck w/me. So we dug the hole ourselves and dropped the candle-wax-sealed metal toolbox in it, covered it up, where my aviation magazine remains to this day. I don't blame my teacher for not anticipation what would happen to the Soviet Union in less than 10 years, but the whole exercise was stupid and alarmist!
I played more than one computer/console game that involved knocking out commie missiles before they hit American cities. (NATO cities were just as good as American ones.) Sure, the video game industry is pretty tired of taking the heat for influence on kids, but not back in 1983.
[b]Marriage breakup[/b]
I'm sure a lot of people from [i]all[/i] eras can get this. My mother's outrage was so extreme at my father's infidelity, she made very very sure that I was fully aware of what he was all about and how he let down her and the family. Now, his betrayal was extreme, and that did its own damage, but none of that justifies bringing us into it. This is the first time I've every acknowledged this outside of my own head. Congratulations sweeps, you heard it here first.
[big]Healthy ways in which I was introduced to the world[/big]
Now, that doesn't mean you have to run your family like a cult. Here are some of the ways in which I was taught about the world in the right portions.
[b]Griping about the government[/b]
My dad did that all the time (when our leader was PM Nice Hair's dad). That much pessimism isn't healthy for kids, but at least I never found myself imaging the jack boots coming up our walk (like they were in that neighbourhood a year before I was born, but never after).
[b]Hitler winning what-if[/b]
My mother told me that if Hitler won the war, there would be a guy in a guard house at the end of our street, stopping cars and asking us where we were going, when we'd be back, etc. Very silly thing to fill your kids heads w/, to be sure, but my grandfather and his Mosquito made sure that didn't to happen before my parents were even born, so who cares?
[b]Falklands war[/b]
My dad told me all there was to know about it, in its advent, but being in another hemisphere, it was a lot more interesting than frightening.
[b]Communism[/b]
My dad did an excellent job of teaching me about the ills of Communism in terms I could understand, like E. Germans willing to risk their lives to escape it, but with an ocean and a lot of land in between us and a [i]very[/i] cold archipelago as a backdoor, I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.
[b]Nuclear conflagration[/b]
I'm sure a lot of Generation X went through this. I guess I was born in the sweet-spot of Gen X to be aware of the perils of strategic nuclear weapons and young enough to overblow it. Now I can't blame the mass media for allowing me to know this, anymore than millennials could have been kept oblivious to 9/11. However, my grade 6 teacher had this... this... theme about how we can perpetuate ourselves beyond nuclear annihilation. We couldn't preserve ourselves, he believed, so we made a time capsule. So, we bought in materials for this time capsule to tell whomever comes later what we were. One kid brought a comic book, and the teacher showed the depictions of violence and he quoted the beneficiaries with "boy, are we ever glad this civilization is over!". And so that's what we were ready for: the end of our civilization.
So he researched time capsules and learned that burying it so many feet below the ground in a hermetically sealed box should preserve most things that we would put in it, "unless a missile lands in the middle of the school grounds." 35 years later, these words stuck w/me. So we dug the hole ourselves and dropped the candle-wax-sealed metal toolbox in it, covered it up, where my aviation magazine remains to this day. I don't blame my teacher for not anticipation what would happen to the Soviet Union in less than 10 years, but the whole exercise was stupid and alarmist!
I played more than one computer/console game that involved knocking out commie missiles before they hit American cities. (NATO cities were just as good as American ones.) Sure, the video game industry is pretty tired of taking the heat for influence on kids, but not back in 1983.
[b]Marriage breakup[/b]
I'm sure a lot of people from [i]all[/i] eras can get this. My mother's outrage was so extreme at my father's infidelity, she made very very sure that I was fully aware of what he was all about and how he let down her and the family. Now, his betrayal was extreme, and that did its own damage, but none of that justifies bringing us into it. This is the first time I've every acknowledged this outside of my own head. Congratulations sweeps, you heard it here first.
[big]Healthy ways in which I was introduced to the world[/big]
Now, that doesn't mean you have to run your family like a cult. Here are some of the ways in which I was taught about the world in the right portions.
[b]Griping about the government[/b]
My dad did that all the time (when our leader was PM Nice Hair's dad). That much pessimism isn't healthy for kids, but at least I never found myself imaging the jack boots coming up our walk (like they were in that neighbourhood a year before I was born, but never after).
[b]Hitler winning what-if[/b]
My mother told me that if Hitler won the war, there would be a guy in a guard house at the end of our street, stopping cars and asking us where we were going, when we'd be back, etc. Very silly thing to fill your kids heads w/, to be sure, but my grandfather and his Mosquito made sure that didn't to happen before my parents were even born, so who cares?
[b]Falklands war[/b]
My dad told me all there was to know about it, in its advent, but being in another hemisphere, it was a lot more interesting than frightening.
[b]Communism[/b]
My dad did an excellent job of teaching me about the ills of Communism in terms I could understand, like E. Germans willing to risk their lives to escape it, but with an ocean and a lot of land in between us and a [i]very[/i] cold archipelago as a backdoor, I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.
46-50, M
