Need to know basis

Maybe we protect our kids too much, but I'm a proponent of limiting the amount of data they are exposed to. Like movies, for instance. When I was five, my parents took us to see a double feature at the drive-in: "The Exorcist" and "The Omen." Scared the shit out of me. To this day, I'm not a big fan of horror movies. Another example: my children have never heard me or Cyndi swear. My father, on the other hand, used colorful language all the time. It pretty much came with the territory for him. He was a blue-collar, fleet service clerk for American Airlines, and the "f" word was a common part of their vernacular. I think I just feel there is a time and a place for everything.

The recent situation with an old classmate of mine is another prime example. The kids knew information about the situation we chose to expose them to. Friday evening, before we left for a "date night," my mother-in-law was glued to our television set. She had the four o'clock news on, listening to the update of the situation. Both kids were sitting next to her on the couch. Not a good idea, if you ask me. I didn't really want the kids to hear the media's raw portrayal of things. Right or wrong, it's just what I prefer.

I think much of this opinion stems from one incident from my youth. Since my father worked at O'Hare airport, we often heard about plane crashes. Planes were my father's life in his everyday, and so he spoke freely about mishaps in the air. Most of the crashes occurred in far away places. But one happened in our back door.

I believe it was 1979. My father had just come home from work, and he noticed a large cloud of smoke in the air in the direction toward the airport. I think he must have suspected something bad had happened. He told my brother and I to get in the car. On the radio, the announcers were talking about a major plane crash in a mobile home park near O'Hare. This was literally fifteen minutes from our house. I don't know why my father felt compelled to drive near the scene. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was curiosity. We didn't get very close, given the chaos in the area. But my imagination got the best of me, looking at the black smoke in the air, listening to the information on the radio. I thought about the people who were on the plane. I thought about the people who lived in the mobile homes. I was scared.

We returned home and turned on the news. Information kept pouring in, pictures began surfacing. I heard about the "charred bodies," and saw the way the DC-10 turned on its side before crashing. I was nine.

I don't blame my father for being curious. Planes were his life, American Airlines was his life, he wanted to know what happened. I do think, however, that my fear of flying is because of this incident, which is why I prefer to provide information to the kids on a "need to know" basis. Experiences, memories, life from childhood can remain with you. I've not enjoyed horror movies for nearly 35 years. I've had a fear of flying for 30. You never know what is going to stick in the memory banks of a child. You never know.