Cosby, and the Kellermans' Wisdom

 When I write, it is usually me putting down the words I wish I could say out loud, but can't.   The part of my head that vocalizes is slow, and feels somehow disconnected from the rest of my mind.  If a situation is tense for any reason, my mind does something I refer to as "shut down" mode.  This makes my mind even slower.  It can take hours, or days, or even longer, for my mind to catch up to what was happening that made my brain shut down.  At that point, I can think of what I would like to have said in response to whatever was happening.  This is the source of a lot of what I have written since I was nine, and I wrote my first poem, about a dog dying on the side of the road in front of a church, and nobody else was noticing what a car had done to that dog, how it was suffering.

When my kids were growing up, I was seen as a permissive, ungodly parent.  I own that, one-hundred percent.  Still would be, today.  Pikachu was not demonic, any music my kids liked could be played in our van or from the ancient boom box in our backyard, and if my kids asked to see a movie or TV show, and it wasn't rated pg, I simply watched it with them, so they could ask questions about topics they didn't understand.  I once heard author Faye Kellerman say that she and her husband, author Jonathan Kellerman, did not restrict what their children read, they simply read whatever it was, too, and discussed it with the interested child.  This made sense to me.  It did not make sense to any other parents I knew.  I know my parenting skills were called into question a lot.  In looking back, my biggest mistakes were the times I let others pressure me into changing my initial parenting decisions.

My kids enjoyed comedians.  I cannot tell you how awesome it was for me to share Bill Cosby's classic stage performance with them, and hear them quote from that special, like my sis and I once did, back when that special aired for the first time.  My kids would repeat those jokes, on the way to the dentist, or on a morning I would let them talk me into serving leftover chocolate cake for breakfast.  (Yes, with orange juice.)  It broke all of our hearts when Cosby's predatory behavior was finally made public.  Mr. Cosby was a hero to my oldest son.  Even that, though painful to discover, was a learning time for my kids, as I explained how predators in this world can hide their behavior.  Later, when my daughter had a close classmate experience sexual abuse by a beloved teacher, and someone in the middle of that mess did take their own life because of the pain, the lessons were clearer, to my daughter.  It was part of her encouraging me to blog about my childhood, because she had, a couple of times, gotten a gut feeling that her friend was being harmed by their teacher, but my daughter did as most of society does, talked herself out of what her gut had known.  She realized why predators get away with harming kids.  She told me I needed to write about that, so kids could be better protected.

I do not believe in censorship.  But I do believe in parents/guardians/adults making sure children and vulnerable young people are protected from predators.  Joking about sex can be funny as hell.  Joking about past partners who were difficult elicits a lot of laughs.  But using sexual circumstances to groom, misuse, and re-exploit much younger emotionally damaged youth is always wrong.  To joke about an emotionally damaged much younger girl, as if she was an equal peer in a healthy relationship, is always bullshit. That is predatory behavior. 

Censorship is bullshit.  Blindly letting a 59 yr-old man harm mentally and emotionally damaged much younger girls, blindly letting that man start publicly grooming little children so they see him as safe, is wrong.