October 31st, 2006

Q: When did you first know that technical writing was going to be your career?

A: When I started correcting the grammar and vocabulary for accuracy on Christmas cards before sending them to my family.

(It's true, just ask them.)

* * *

So ... tonight is the night we suspend all protective tendencies over our children. Tonight is the night we throw them to the lions (so to speak) and let the three witches of fate play havoc with them. Now, don't get me wrong, I am all for Hallowe'en and April Fool's Day, and that magic week of Christmas that our white Western culture grew up with. Frankly, I think it makes life more worth living if everything gets turned onto its head periodically. (Oh, by the way, I know this is not a new thought by any means.)

But there is an issue here that raises my eyebrows a little: We spend 360 or so days of the year reminding our children how dangerous strangers are, how perverted, violent, evil-intentioned, and all-around untrustworthy that they might be ... and then we send our kiddies parading around to all manner of strangers' houses. Taking candy from strangers! Good grief!

Christmas is another one of those weird short-circuits in our cultural paranoia: We're happy to let our children have a seat on "Santa's" lap. Go on, we tell them confusingly, you can sit on his lap because it's all right when it's Christmas time in the shopping mall. (Or department store, or whatever). We suspend normal operations for that moment. Watch out for Bad Men ... but though that man is in disguise and acting very strange, go ahead and sit on him and talk to him. Did I steer ya wrong about the candy at Hallowe'en, kid? Huh?

Now, I am not being critical of that. I know it's confusing to kids, but that's just fine by me. Why set up such rigid rules without the occasional pressure valve? Isn't it all right once in a while to completely mindfuck our kids? If you are completely iron-clad strict and consistent all through life your children grow up sneaky and underhanded: They build their own little pressure valves of deceit and dishonesty and, believe me, those kids will be able to outthink their parents because they've had years of experience learning just what their parents can and can't see. Give them the occasional brain-melting situation. Keep them surprised, occasionally delighted, at the inconsistency of life ... that's what we do as adults, isn't it?

Now I am not preaching parental anarchy here, either: Children of those kinds of parents tend to grow up to hurl themselves, wired on crystal meth, in stolen cars at high speeds through intersections screaming "INCOMING! INCOMING!"

No, I'm just saying that it makes more sense to show a good solid set of "don't trust the boogeyman" rules for 95% of the time, then really mess with their minds every once in a while. That builds complexity of character, intelligence, creativity; it leaves kids with a kernel of thought in their minds after they've grown up: Everything is possible, sometimes. The world isn't as simple as you might like to think it is: Caution comes from experiencing the unknown just as much as avoiding the dangers of the unknown. And for those times when you are long gone and your kids really are caught up in a new and frightening environment, maybe a part of their brains will kick in and say, "This isn't the first time I've been challenged like this. This may not be status quo ... this may not be anything I've seen before, but the unfamiliar won't cripple me, 'cause I've lived through the unexpected before."

So go out and expose your kids and yourself to a little "danger" ... how much, of course, is entirely up to you; it's all on a spectrum anyhow. But make sure you don't lock the iron gates and throw away the keys on your children: 'Cause what they may become later in life could be more scary than anything you're trying to protect them from now.

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