Way back in college, it seems like ancient history, even though it was only fifteen years ago, I registered for every literature class I could take. Lit classes were the only ones I really enjoyed. Fortunately, I was an English major, so it was encouraged.

Inevitably, my pursuit to pack each semester’s syllabus with as much literary matriculation as allowed, led me to classes on women’s literature and feminist studies of novels. I was the only male in the room for one of those classes. I quite enjoyed them, really. Always being a proponent of gender equity, I had no trouble getting along and was always interested in the perspectives of others. But to say that the views of some of the students and professors were a little more radical than mine is an understatement.

Often in those classes, through the studies of a particular novel, or in the readings of feminist essays, the subject of discussion centered on the concept of the “kept woman.” The kept woman was the most tragic figure to feminist readings, utterly powerless and enslaved by the male hierarchy. It never failed that stay at home mothers became part of the conversation. I always perceived a severely ambivalent sentiment toward at home moms from the staunch feminists in the room. The sentiment was one of mixed pity and some underlying disdain. Yet, at the same time, there was the feeling that they were undervalued. We even read and discussed back to back essays; one about how women should be valued and paid for at home work, another about women at home squandering their true potential.

Those were the comments that always surfaced in the classroom debates, as well. The feminist perspective seemed to be that while, at once, feeling that women at home were oppressed and under-appreciated, they were also somehow damaging the feminist cause by not becoming educated professionals. A few students expressed the idea that many women at home didn’t really want to be there. They had been duped (by male society) into believing that homemaking was fulfilling and more important than a career. Stay at home moms had been defrauded of their dreams. They were “kept women.”

I was reminded of those classes and those young women when the Hilary Rosen dust up occurred last week. Rosen remarked that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life,” setting off a controversy that cable news vultures have been picking at for days. Subsequent comments by Rosen and others have caused me to wonder how much life the college-lit-feminist view of stay at home mothers still has.

To be clear, Rosen’s initial comment seemed, to me, to be little more than a clumsy attempt to make a swipe at Ann Romney’s wealth and station, not her choice as a homemaker. Many of those who initially attacked her seemed to be opportunists, looking to stir controversy. Yet, even though she has now apologized, her initial tweets defending her comments seemed to suggest that real women go to work and raise children.

Rosen’s supporters have done far worse. One of the cable news networks had a debate about the comments last week. A Rosen supporter espoused her respect for stay at home moms, but went on to draw a distinction between stay at home parenting and “the real world.”

And then there is Bill Maher, echoing Rosen’s original jab, in his own, special, coarse way. Maher continued a step further to describe how stay at home parenting is not the same as having a job because a person has to go to an office all day, even when it’s cold, and deal with a boss, whether they want to or not.

I don’t know how prevalent the sentiment is that stay at home parenting is not as difficult or “real” as having a paid job. I don’t know where exactly the sentiment comes from. It certainly doesn’t come from anyone who has ever tried stay at home parenting. Those of us who have done both will tell you that some very successful people in “the real world” would crumble after a few months at home. I have worked very difficult jobs and parenting competes with all of them.

If the belief in the inferiority of stay at home moms is a product of the feminist thinking I encountered so many years ago, it is a sad irony – and a short-sighted one at that. Many of them probably have stay at home mothers to thank for teaching them the values that drive them. Women should support the choices of any other woman who is contributing something valuable to society. I can’t think of anything more valuable than a new generation of good people to run things. The idea of putting a salary value on that is absurd. Do working parents want to know how much they should earn an hour for the parenting they do when they get home? There is no need to put a price on it. It is priceless.

Raising kids and being the support system for a family is as hard and demanding as any paid position. It is challenging. It is fulfilling. There are no set hours. And yes, we have to do it, even when it’s cold.

Several years ago, in my past life, I promoted a great book by Richard Louv called Last Child in the Woods. Louv is one of the world’s great advocates for getting kids back to nature, teaching them about the natural world and strengthening the relationship that people must necessarily have to the world outside of technology.

Louv’s book charged with some convincing evidence, that the disconnect between kids and nature and their overexposure to technology could be playing a hand in a host of learning and emotional deficits that seem to have become prevalent over the last couple of decades. Scientific evidence continues to emerge and mount that support Louv’s claims. He has succinctly outlined a few of those findings in a recent blog post.

It bears noting that, one of the articles, from the Sunday Times, referenced in his blog, reflects a post I wrote several months ago about GPS affecting our spatial and navigation abilities. Apparently, this is a question others are beginning to look into.

Beyond these more pressing questions about Nature Deficit Disorder (Louv’s term) leading to ADD, or anxiety issues in our children, there are other issues of concern about generations becoming disconnected from the natural world.

When I grew up as a country kid, in Iowa, the state of nature was one of the orienting factors of life. Learning the names of trees and plants, the habits of animals, the cycles of life throughout the year, were an integral part to functioning, or, at least, needed skills for outdoorsman-ship. The simple knowledge of what poison ivy looked like could save a person a lot of anguish. Knowing how to hunt for mushrooms, what a muskrat den looked like, how to find snakes and frogs, were skills that created some of my fondest memories. Will modern children fondly remember disposable and meaningless things like the time they got the new smart phone, or when they beat the really hard level in some video game?

I try very hard to take my own son to parks and hiking several times a week. I’ve noticed that, on weeks when we are very busy, or the weather isn’t cooperating, and he is indoors too much, there is a distinct change in him. He tends to become more irascible and unsettled. He sleeps less and less peacefully. The difference isn’t just the exercise. I’ve tried to make up for it by playing hide and seek in the house, or going to someplace indoors where he can run around. It is just empirical observation, nothing scientific, but the effect of fresh air and trees is there. Perhaps it is even just the need for the lulling peace of natural quiet, away from television and traffic and his Innotab games. Put simply, when he is in nature more, he is a happier kid.

It makes sense to me then, that children who have little chance to commune with nature, and whose lives revolve around constant technology, in the confines of towns and cities, may become somewhat stressed, or depressed.

Down the road, the simple disconnect, the lack of understanding and knowledge of how the earth and its ecosystems work puts future generations at a dire deficit to adequately protect and nurture it. It would likely become difficult to even care about something they have had no exposure to.

So, hats off to Louv, and those like him working to keep the relationship alive. It is important to remember, whether we live within steel and stone, spend our lives walking on asphalt, dwell with our heads buried in LED screens, we are still, in the simplest terms, animals. We must have some need to remain connected to the world that created us.

Last month, eFiction Magazine published this short story I had sitting idly in the pile. I am really excited about the reaction it got and thought I’d share it here, since I now have the rights back. Let me know what you think.

“I put the dork in the floor.” He smiled slightly. Outside the abandoned house, the vacillating scree of cicadas flayed the air. Something creaked in the dark as the pale glow of the moon beamed through broken windows. The moon-pale, cast across the rickety wood, made the whole house ghostly and the circle of light from JD’s flashlight, which was pointed directly at the floor now, looked a pathetic, disingenuous spotlight on a nonexistent performance. It was a sad spot of artificial glow, where a miniature circus act should have been, but was cancelled, due to lack of interest.

JD looked at Bear in the lunar night blue and tried to read his face, attempted to understand the meaning of what he said, to absorb what it might mean for the dork to be “in” the floor. He playfully pitched the flashlight beam around the wood planks. “Where at, in the floor?”

Bear pointed through a doorway in front of them. “Over there, in the floor.”

“It’s just like you.” He laughed.

“What’s just like me?”

“Just to be like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like, ‘I put him in the floor.’ You know, whatever. So he’s gotta be scared as shit. Let’s go let him out.”

“He don’t care. He was pretty good about it. Go take a look.”

They creaked across the bowed floorboards through the doorway. The house had not been occupied in decades. Sometimes cows and pigs wandered through when the farmer that owned the land was grazing them outside. The smell of the animals passing through, their musk and their feces, the smell of rodents and plants feeding on the abandoned space ripened in their noses. In the dim, JD could make out countertops and cabinets in the old kitchen. Curled and dried formica tiles crunched beneath their feet.

The dork was likely shivering in the dark somewhere there. He was a cowardly runt. Bear had hated him for his weakness, for his overt frailty. His name was Kevin and when they were at school together, he cowered from Bear. He cowered from JD too, a ridiculous reaction, considering JD was no kind of tough like Bear. JD was Bear’s only friend because JD always felt in need of protection and Bear always felt in need of a friend he could lean hard on.

Beside the sink was a door that Bear opened, spilling moonlight on a wall of shelves that used to hold canned foods. A dusted jar of dark ooze caught the light, preserves or rotted jam. The pantry shelves contained other things, an oil can, other broken jars, the husks of dead roaches.

“Go in.” Bear pointed to JD. “On the floor there, look.”

There was a small latch and a padlock laying next to it. The trap door to the cellar was covered in the same, chipped formica as the kitchen. He lifted the metal tongue from the latch and pulled up. The door was heavier than he predicted. He looked back at Bear who was puffed up with pride, clearly excited. Only blackness pooled below him, a reservoir of tar, bereft of anything visible. He listened for the sound of breathing or struggling, scraping or whimpering. Silence presented its knowing self. JD’s flashlight dimly revealed five wooden steps leading to a dirt floor. Shallow and dank, stinking of dead bugs and rat dung, this crawlspace daunted him with the idea of having to bend down and crawl through whatever arthropod wonderland of webs and fangs, crust of exoskeleton that time had deposited here. He sensed the decades of invasion and piercing, squeezing of primitive organs, injection of stomach juices from one multi-legged thing to another. Bear’s face was expectant, urging. Disappointing him seemed worse than a sting or a slight prick of insect pincers.

Together they had planned the prank on the dork for some time. They watched him pedal his route home every day after school, after Bear had spent his time in school, following and taunting the dork, slapping the books from his hands, pinching him hard under the arm in the lunch line. The dork symbolized something to Bear that JD could never fathom. He watched him torment the spindly kid like he was chasing wolves from a flock of sheep, swinging his big stick to clear the danger away. Bear walked home most days, mumbling about the stupidity of the dork’s actions, mannerisms, the clumsy way he spoke and stood on the playground. JD believed that Bear dreamed about the dork, that those dreams were somehow scary. Many mornings, during the walk to school, Bear would scowl and berate the things he imagined seeing the dork doing when they arrived. As awkward and pitiful as he seemed to JD, the boy was just another weak body to push aside, another profound validation of strength of muscle and the power of toughness over feebleness. JD found Bear’s tormenting amusing, but itched a little at the need, the lust Bear found for more.

In the dark, slightly illuminated by the dimming flashlight, JD creaked down the stairs, bent over, like a hunchback, and peering to make out what eldritch shadows vacillated in front of him. At the bottom of the stairs, he folded to his knees on the dirt floor and looked back at Bear, who stood over him, grinning and urging him forward with his hands. Panning the light around, JD could make out a crawlspace that was as deep and wide as the footprint of the house, draped, in every nook, with silks from casual spiders that knew they were doing their work in seclusion. It was only on the second pass with the light that he caught sight of the heel of a high top tennis shoe, lying on its side. A chalky calf protruded from the shoe into the dark. The boy was tucked about twelve feet away. JD moved forward, trained on the skinny leg and waiting for it to kick in panic for the terror Bear had savaged upon it.

As he crawled nearer to the dork shoe and dork leg, he illuminated dork jean shorts and the back of a dork polo shirt, draping the ribby dork torso he’d seen and made fun of in gym class. He thought he heard a short huff, proof that the dork was lying in the dark terrified. Bear had probably tied him to one of the support posts that stood at engineered intervals amid the crawlspace. JD was sweating and inhaling dust as he finally reached the backside of his schoolmate. He sneezed a couple of times, stirring up more particulate into the dim beam. Above him, he heard a bemused Bear wishing him “Bless you.”
A chunk of wood, the handle of some old tool lay by the back of his head. JD put his hand on the dork’s shoulder and gave a rough shake. “Hey, Kevin. Get the fuck scared out of you, little punk?”

The boy’s whole body rocked, stiffly. The dark closed around JD. Knowing he must lean over, put the light on the boy’s face, confirm what he knew, made him sicken. He did it anyway. Roughly pulling the boy toward him, he angled the light onto a slack jaw and glass eyes. A brownish diamond stain adorned the center of his shirt. JD saw the pool in the dirt on the other side and let go of the body, panting and scooting away. His hands flapped out behind him as he crab walked backward. His fingers stung as one hand came down on something sharp.

“Johnny, what are you doing down there? Making out with him?”

JD whipped his head around, looking to see if Bear was in the hole with him. The voice had still come from above. Pain lingered in his fingers and he inspected his hand with the light. A hairline cut beaded blood across three of his fingers. He trained the light on the attacking creature. The wood handle he had seen lay peacefully in the dirt. This time he saw the carving blade, coated with brown shellac that matched the pool beside the dork. JD took the knife and looked toward the moonlit trapdoor, the shadow of his friend darkening the portal. That smile, the one that was never quite right, was up there waiting, looking for the reaction it had in mind. JD must guess that reaction and give the Bear what he wanted. Something shifted and JD humped backward again. In the dying flashlight beam, he saw the dork’s arm sliding across his shirt toward the dirt floor.

“John!” The jagged whisper came. “Get done gawking and get up here, dammit. We got things to work out.”

He called JD ‘John’ or ‘John David’ when he was trying to manipulate him. It was Bear’s version of sweet-talking him. It usually worked, primarily because JD was terrified of what Bear would do if it didn’t work, not because of any powers of charming he possessed.

The flashlight died out completely and JD let it fall in the dirt, hobbling toward the trap door on his knuckles, gripping the murder weapon in his uncut hand. He kept it close to his side as he crawled up the staircase and locked eyes with Bear, smiling the way he had imagined. Bear held his hands up and sighed, “Dork in the floor.”

“What happened?” He pursed his lips to keep them from quivering.

“He was gonna tell on us. He wouldn’t quit crying and he started screaming that he was gonna tell on us.” He leaned against the kitchen counter with his arms folded.

“I wasn’t there.”

“It was us that planned it, you just as much as me. So it was us he was gonna tell on, even if it was just me.”

“Last time you talked to me, we planned to tie him up in the dark for a while. I didn’t go along with anything else.” JD climbed out of the hole and sidestepped Bear, trying to work his way toward the door.

“Things got tough. You weren’t here. I was trying to scare him some more with the knife. I held it to his throat. He started thrashing around, rolled himself right onto it. Neither one of us planned for that to happen. It was real bad luck. I would have done something for him, if I could.”

“You don’t seem too worried about it.”

Bear slid along the counter toward the kitchen door that JD was trying to make his way toward. He kept his arms folded in front of him. They were soon face to face.

“I hated that creep. I’m supposed to act upset now. It was an accident. I won’t get in trouble for an accident, not much.”
“They won’t see it as an accident.”

“They will if you help. Put the knife on the counter, JD. You can go home after that, if you promise not to say anything to anybody.”

He gripped the handle tighter to his side. “It’s still down there.”

“No, you got it right there in your hand. I can tell by the way you’re holding your arm. Just drop it on the counter and go. I can trust you not to say anything, but I can’t let you leave here with that particular knife. It could get you in trouble along with me. I have to get rid of it right away.”

“What about the dork?”

“Nobody’s going to find him either. I’ll bury him right down there where he lays. You just have to promise you won’t say anything. If you keep shut up, it won’t ever be a problem. Put down the knife and give me your word.”

JD looked back at the closet, at the trap door, where Kevin bled out every bit of awkward blood. He began to cry. “I’m not going to tell anyone, Bear. I’m going to try and never think about it again. What you did, you did. That’s it.”

“What we did. The knife in your hand…I was wearing work gloves when I held it. You didn’t bring gloves, did you? You got a little cut there on your other hand.”

JD saw a single drip had run to the end of his finger.

“So your blood’s here in the house. I know you won’t say anything. Put it on the counter and you can go.”

Something almost rakish, a clowny humor shined in the Bear’s eyes. He was not smiling, but JD could sense giddiness in his movements, his jaunty stepping around the kitchen with those judgmental arms clamped across his chest. A call of subconscious sources came from the open trap door. An anxiety, a panic shot from it like a phantom’s hand and gripped the back of JD’s brain. He threw the knife at the hole and heard it thump in the dirt as he turned to run from the house. Before he could breach the kitchen doorframe, there was a rough hand on his shirt collar pulling him back, throwing him to the floor. He sat up and Bear was over him. His beefy arms opened and revealed a tarnished blade in one of his gloved hands.

“There’s a whole drawer full of old knives over there.” He cocked his head to the counter.

JD pushed his hands out toward Bear, wide open, fingers shaking. “Wait! I’m your friend. I’m with you.”

“Make me proud, then, JD. Don’t squeal, like the dork.” He began stabbing, over-handed, pushing the boy’s defending hands away with his free arm. JD panted and grunted, tried to plead, but he never squealed.

Bear emerged from the house panting and cackling, when he could huff enough air to cackle. He admired the moon and it admired him back, a symbiote love affair only they knew. There was a dog barking in the night somewhere. Down the road, just beyond the dip between cornfields, some quarter mile before the road turned west toward the dork’s house, the lights were on in a farmhouse a short distance away. Bear had seen the old man who lived there tending his chickens in the morning. The woman watered the flowerbeds around the porch when the sun was hot. They were nice people.

He thought of his father and almost got tears to come. He thought of his father drunk and felt his face redden. He punched himself in the cheek and thought harder. Soon he was crying. He began to run as fast as he could, striking out a blow to his own eye every few yards. He imagined coming up the farmhouse steps and begging for help. Bear cried out in the night and, the more he thought, the more genuine it became. He’d been through a horrible experience, nearly murdered. A kindly, old farm couple would be his saviors.

I’m just a lowly writer, a novelist, blogging for recognition and fame. I don’t have the chops of the schooled and road-weary pundits that grace the tiny head boxes of the cable channels, or the spotlight areas of news sites. Frankly, I don’t even like going political in my blogs, for the most part. Yet, I cannot remain silent in my observation of the investigation cum sensationalism cum circus that has revolved around the killing of Trayvon Martin.

He was killed. That is one fact. He was killed by a man who’s background is now under scrutiny. Further, Trayvon himself is now under scrutiny. It is the sad effect of stories that balloon beyond themselves and beg for scrutiny in all aspects.

What do we know about this case? I’ve heard the 911 calls. I’ve heard friends of Zimmerman speak. I’ve heard Trayvon’s parents speak. I’ve heard what you have heard, what every blogger and news organization has heard and reported on. It is not enough to clearly draw a conclusion, yet, conclusions are being drawn, and they are being drawn as wildly and speculatively as one can dream of.

People are dreaming of having a conduit into George Zimmerman’s head. I watched a forum of the Congressional Black Caucus yesterday and witnessed a woman proclaim that racial profiling, racism and the ‘stand your ground’ law were to blame. She didn’t go on to offer any evidence of any of these proclamations. She just went on.

Since we’re into proclamations and speculations, let me offer one of my own. Here’s an equally legitimate scenario that could have happened – George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, went out to do his job. By all accounts, he’d called 911 an inordinate amount of times. He’d constantly called police to report suspicious people and wrongdoings in his neighborhood. That is what a neighborhood watch captain could be presumed to do.

George saw a suspicious person in the neighborhood and once again called the authorities. He followed the man and reported what he saw. On the other end of the situation is a young man who sees an intimidating figure following him. He calls his girlfriend and intimates his fear to her. He is afraid and trying to get away. Yet, his pursuer seems relentless.

The police tell George to stop following and he clearly says ‘OK.” What happened after that seems murky. He may have returned to his truck, he may have continued the pursuit. At some point, Trayvon decides he’s had enough and confronts his pursuer. According to the one eye-witness to come forward, Trayvon attacked George Zimmerman. He broke his nose. He bashed his head into the pavement. Trayvon likely believed he was fighting for his life. George Zimmerman likely believed he was fighting for his. Zimmerman, at some point, pulled the gun he was carrying and shot Trayvon Martin, killing him.

This is a tragedy, in all aspects of the word. Whether my speculation is correct, or not, a kid is dead, who doesn’t deserve to be dead. A man is being convicted in the court of public opinion, who doesn’t deserve his toxic tags. There is no evidence, whatsoever, that George Zimmerman’s, or Trayvon Martin’s race had anything to do with this tragic incident. Something may surface, which would completely change my opinion. At this point, however, not one thing has come to light to indicate that George Zimmerman shot Martin because of his race.

Yet, their races have penultimate import to the media and civil rights figures. Zimmerman was tagged a “white Hispanic” in the New York Times. I don’t know how many articles they’ve run on the president, but, I don’t recall him ever being referred to as the first “white black” president of the United States. Rep. Maxine Waters stated that there was “stiff evidence” that this was a hate crime. Al Sharpton has been taxiing between his MSNBC show and leading rallies about racism in Sanford, probably the stiffest evidence that real reporting is dead in America.

The anti-gun lobby is in an uproar. The NAACP is foaming. The president is planting questions with NBC reporters at press conferences so he can weigh in. The DOJ is stepping up to “investigate.” The New Black Panthers are offering bounties for George Zimmerman. Even Trayvon’s poor, distraught parents are being paraded around, like circus animals, to support the causes of all of these outside interests.

The real tragedy is that a kid is dead, who doesn’t need to be. A man is being persecuted, publicly, and possibly legally, who may not deserve it. And, all the media/political sphere seems to be concerned with is how to exploit this horrible incident for the furthering of agendas. Who is out there just feeling sick about the whole thing? Who is out there saying, “Why do things like this happen?” without having a cause on the back end of it. A kid is dead, who doesn’t need to be. We have to keep reminding ourselves of that. Instead of looking to blame some social ill, we need to really feel the tragedy of bad things. If only the two men had stopped and talked, stated their purposes, maybe, just maybe, none of this would have happened. This is an opportunity to mourn the senseless death of a young man, not vent the frustrations of a nation, ostensibly, in his name. We should be better than this.

I find myself increasingly bothered by propaganda and PSAs targeting kids. Primarily, I think our kids are being over-messaged. This is putting aside, and out of the discussion whether I agree with the message or not. Frankly a lot of the things I see kids bombarded with are probably good messages. One glaring thing missing from all of the propaganda, however, is any included message directing kids to talk to their parents about the cause celebre. We are, after all, the ones conscripted and charged with guiding them through life, and, anybody who’s been on the playground with other parents knows that opinions vary on what is right for our children. Often there is no one best approach to anything, whether it be nutrition, bullying or a kid’s place in saving the environment.

I mention the latter because it seems lately that I cannot take my son to a movie, a museum or to lunch at a chain restaurant without some form of messaging about kids and environmentalism making it into the film, exhibit or children’s menu. Clearly, the green crowd has been out in force for a long time to put a bee in a generation of baby bonnets and change the thinking of the new generation.

A lot of the things they have to say seem like good sense. Even as I want my son to care about the world he grows up in, I also want him to be able to eat his mac and cheese and root beer, color on his menu, without a group of branded cartoon characters imploring him to save water and recycle. Maybe I’m being oversensitive, but it starts to feel intrusive, after a while. I can talk to him about all of this stuff whenever we encounter it. It is my job to do so. But it might be nice to not have to be confronted with it constantly.

Being a kid should be about having fun and new experiences, learning on your own terms. I don’t think kids should have to constantly worry about eating right, exercising enough, saving the ecosystem, being stalked on the internet, drug dealers or when the next bully is going to show up in their life. Those things are mom and dad’s domain to vigilantly watch over. It is our place to make them aware of these issues, to keep them informed without making it a constant and overbearing theme. It tends to suck the fun out of life. Further, what if the message being put forth seems questionable, or even damaging?

Recently, Cartoon Network began running an anti-bullying ad in which the spokespeople adamantly implore kids to never stand up to a bully. Remarking that it “just makes things worse.” Instead, children are directed to always go tell on the bully.

Now, on one hand I get where this is coming from. More frequently, in these times, bullying situations have sometimes escalated into serious violence. No one wants to see that happen. As an umbrella rule for bullying, however, run away and tell on them seems like an extremely misguided protocol.

Most of us can remember bullying situations, involving ourselves or others, as we made our own way through childhood. We also remember seeing those situations resolved in different ways and what the results were. I remember a kid on my school bus in middle school who decided not to like me, for some reason. I endured daily assaults of spitwads, actual spit, taunting and name-calling. His threats to beat me up escalated for a period of time, until one day when he decided to start pushing me in the line to exit the bus. I was tired of being intimidated and became angry. Stomping on his foot and elbowing him in the ribs hard enough to knock the wind out of him ended the bullying permanently. Years later we were actually pretty friendly with one another.

Telling on that kid and getting him in trouble would have escalated that situation further and probably led to a more severe fight later on. I had witnessed that outcome with other kids who were bullied.

Kids need to know how to stand up for themselves. When they leave school and become adults there will be other kinds of bullies they encounter at work and in life. There will be no one to run and tattle to, then. Dealing with them confidently and courageously, even diplomatically is an important life skill.

Of course kids need to also learn to recognize when a situation may get out of control, or when there is a potential for life threatening violence and get help. There is no good golden rule for all situations.

Of course Cartoon network can’t advocate fighting back, even if that is the best solution. They also can’t afford to spend the airtime instructing kids on dealing with various scenarios and learning when the danger may be too great to handle yourself. So, rather than adamantly promote a dubious message, perhaps they should shut up and stay out of it, altogether. It’s a parenting duty, anyway.

As for the rest of the PSA tsunami, well, it will likely have to be weathered by parents and be yet another force for them to help kids navigate and find shelter from. The messages are mostly good and we’d all benefit from the reminders ‘now and then.’ But, it might be nice if these advertisers remembered who is in charge and included parents in the discussion.

Today I’m continuing the discussion on dystopian literature with a great contribution by author Martin Gibbs on the need for some dystopian influence in the fantasy genre. Many thanks to Martin for sounding off. Please check out his book, The Spaces Between.

We need a dystopian ideal in fantasy.

It is perfectly normal and OK that the heroes survive, that the magic item is found and that at least most of the main good guys stay alive. But what if they all get to the end and are murdered by the evil villain? Because, after all, that is most likely what would happen in reality, isn’t it? One cannot face a fully-loaded freight train with a pen-knife and hope to survive.

Of course, fantasy stories deal with the heroes, as most stories do. The guy/gal who is strong enough to rise up and find the ring or save the prisoners. That’s fine. What would the point be of telling a long and involved narrative if you’re just going to kill everyone off anyway? Who would read that?

Isn’t it worth the effort to find out? Life is not always fair.

There are too many predictable endings and too many predictable scenarios, in fantasy especially. George RR Martin (to name a massive name in the genre) has done well to keep us off-balance by killing of a slew of characters we may have rooted for.

I tell you it is not enough.