at work...bugging people on AIM...I don't have any work to do because I was in training this morning and the people out here are somewhat disorganized about these things. I've waited over an hour and a half for an email essentially telling me what to do. So I surfed...Went by The Dent and heard about one of Neil Gaiman's latest posts (though it was actually a while ago) and basically have spent the last hour happily wandering around looking for word Neil's new book and Tori's new album.

I was thinking about Coraline and how Neil was talking about how kids think of it as an adventure story and and adults think it's frightening and kids maybe shouldn't read it.

I think this just ties to other thoughts about kids I've had in the past and how I just don't get why our society is so geared toward protecting them and giving them tons of safety and playtime. It's not like I want to take candy from babies or anything, I just wonder what on earth we do for ourselves when we give people dirty looks for cursing in front of kids and why we have lower our voices when talking about sex and why, oh why, in God's name, do we feel like keeping kids from violent movies (but don't really feel a striking need to keep violence in the world to an absolute minimum ack... that's a different entry)?

It just boggles my mind how much the need to "think of the kids" is a force in the world, when really "the kids" are, emperically speaking, parasites. But more on that later.

I remember in high school we read Childhood's End and Mr Kopacki (*ahem* best friggin teacher I have ever had, short of my dad) asked us why it was that the parents of kids who "evolved" became so wild and suicidal? I commented that it seemed like a lot of adults with kids keep their feet on the ground because they want to be around for their kids. He asked if that meant that people lived for their children and if that was a bad thing? Of course I didn't have an answer. No one in that class did and quite possibly had something to do with the fact that no one in that class had any kids. Well, neither did he as it happens.

I remember several years ago when Polically Incorrect was new to ABC and they had a show on which Karen Fineley was a guest. I don't recall the other guests but I remember the topic. I believe it started out with Bill Mahrer asking why prostitution is still illegal. It was first time I heard the term "victimless crime" and I immediately thought of the people - wives, kids - who are ostensibly hurt by a man who solicites a prostitute. Of course, that's not how crime is a assessed, that's not how the low is written and that's not how justice is carried out. If a woman and her kids are hurt by a man's infidelities and the man is convicted of soliciting sex, the punished levied upon him is *not* on behalf of his family. But I digress.

The folks on the show wandered from the topic, as is normal, and started talking about porn, how easy it is to get, and how it can come right into your house without much work on your part (say through your TV). And someone uttered something that was more or less inevitable. I don't remember the words but it was something to the effect of "but it should be hard to get and only available in certain ways because of the children!!" And Karen Finley just rolled her eyes and jumped in. "Why should everything be about the children? What if I want to enjoy it?!? What if I believe I've done a good job about telling them about how the world works, sent them off to bed, and want to enjoy the porn myself? Why does everything we do have to be with an eye toward protecting the kids???" (I'm paraphrasing, of course, this was maybe four years ago.)

She's been sort of a hero ever since. I like the way her mind thinks and like what she has to say - though the simple fact is I just didn't "get" the performance art. It's like abstract painting in that it's hard to get anything to resonate when I don't get it....I think I get wearing nothing but an apron and pushing a vacuum around a stage, but I didn't get the movie footage of her "fingerpainting" milk she had just squeezed out of her breast. *shrug* maybe I am a philistine. (Though I liked her play and got to assist. direct it in college. It was slightly meandering and rather long but easy to identify with.)

But anyway the kids. Anything that I remember encountering that scared me as a kid I never once thought "Oh no! my parent's should be ashamed for letting me encounter this!" and I still don't. Of course, my parents being rather strictly Catholic they liked scaring us with tales of poisoned fruit handed out at Holloween, kids getting stolen when they slipped away from their parents, and of course, a God that would see our misdeeds and wait till just the right moment to punish us for them (see they do belive in karma).

But I've also heard adult peers who have reread books that were pivotal in their childhood and were baffled by why their parents allowed them to be so exposed. I submit that these "adults" were fairly mature as kids and their parents knew they could deal (with the small exception of folks who had terrible/absent parents). But the point is, when they were kids it didn't bother them to read their books. As Neil points out, children don't really understand the amount of trouble Coraline is in, and while they might not envy her "fun" they do think it's rather exciting. I've read lots of adventure stories circling around kids, no small amount of them being about kids in familes migrating under cover of darknes away from an oppressive, murderous foe (say Nazis or slave owners). And I admired that life. Not that I, for even an instant, wanted it for myself.

The world is harsh and I always figured it was a parent's job to prepare a kid to enter the world as a mature, reasonable adult. Codelling them is bad, but frankly treating them as miniature adults is possibly worse (ask any Palestinian lad from the Gaza Strip). Where was I going with this? Oh Who Cares?