Innocence Lost...Days Gone By

Last night as I lay in bed searching for something to watch on TV as I fell asleep, an old movie caught my eye and a memory vividly filled my senses.  As I began to tell Jeff about it, it became starkly apparent, as it does so often at 1 a.m. when I simply can't sleep, that the world we live in today is very different than the world we lived in when I was child.

To say I grew up sheltered would be an understatement. My mother was convinced that the devil was around every corner, living in every neighbors home, on every record (yes I said record), in every book not promoted by the church, and in every television show not Mutual of O'Maha Wild Kingdom, Jacques Cousteau, or Laurence Welk. Books containing any reference to magic like today's Harry Potter, would have been worthy of burning by her standards, Satan's playground. Like I said.....a different time.

Television was scandalous enough with shows like Threes Company, The Love Boat, Love American Style, Maude, and Laugh In. To catch a glimpse of these was a feat of mission impossible and I felt quite accomplished and rebellious when I managed to do so even if only for a minute or two. Movies were a bit more complicated.  I remember my mother being furious with my Aunt Marie and my Grandmother Aileen when during one summers visit they took me to see Disney's Escape to Witch Mountain.  Imagine her horror a few years later when when she discovered me watching Flashdance at my church boyfriends home while his parents were there.

There was the summer that the traveling evangelists came through town and spent a week convincing the adults that our records were playing messages from the devil when played in reverse at extreme slow speeds.  So naturally, mom broke all of my records except for a few I could scurry away and keep her from finding. Its funny, listen to anything in super slow motion reverse and it will always sound demonic and creepy....go figure

Today, in comparison, the shows my mother and our generation saw as risque and walking the line of decency vs. indecency, are tame. The humor is corny and silly. Censorship has been pushed far beyond the boundaries it once knew and sex and innuendo is commonplace. To find an "innocent" show is rare. Shows like Two Broke Girls rely on one overtly sexual innuendo after another to keep the laughter going. Modern Family relies on the subtlety of the sexual undertows between its characters to keep the dynamic and energy high.  Our music lyrics are all about sex, drugs, and violence and profanity is the norm. Movies are rated differently than they were then. What used to receive an R rated is more PG-13 now.

My kids have a whole different view of the world than I did.  But here is the good thing.......

Growing up so overwhelming sheltered, makes a child struggle to discover what lies beneath the shroud of secrecy.  Rebellion reigns and rules are broken. The parent-child dynamic is fractured, sometimes beyond repair, and a life long lack of understanding and failure to connect is fostered and grows like a fungus. 

Allowing a child to experience life, albeit with parental guidance and a gentle hand and nudge in the right direction when needed, allows them to see the world as it is.  They learn that not all the cookies in the cookie jar are to their taste, and that sometimes too much candy can make you can you sick.  They learn to trust their judgment and to make good choices.  Yes....mistakes will be made, but they can own them and not blame the over protective parent for sheltering them so much that they didn't know what they were getting into.

As I fell asleep last night to the movie I secretly watched while babysitting at Becky and Lou Whitlocks house when I was 15, I remembered feeling so naughty at the time because I knew it was forbidden, and yet.....here and now....I fell asleep, bored and without interest, having seen it once decades ago and not remembering even why it mattered. Cat People......Really????? What was I thinking?