After every episode of “The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin”, Teddy would come on with a special guest… usually a teen flavor of the month celebrity… and talk about how to keep safe as a youngster. Subjects included being a latchkey kid, taking the safest way home, telling your mom if somebody behaved inappropriately towards you, and of course the old favorite “Don’t Talk To Strangers”. Looking at these as I go through my old episodes of the show, they seem out of place and a little bit over the top, maybe even silly. That is through eyes the world has made much more cynical since I was the targeted age group of these things no doubt, but they admittedly do seem a little out of place.
But they shouldn’t.
Almost everyday we turn on the TV to word of another missing child… some people say it’s always happened, it’s just the media covers it more now in the days of 24 hour news channels. Some say that our society hasn’t done enough to keep predators behind bars… some say we haven’t done enough to “rehabilitate” them. Some cite bible references saying this proves we’re nearing the end of the world. Some just switch the channel to American Idol.
Maybe we should bring back some “Protect Yourself” segments… replacing Shannen Doherty and Chad Allen with Hannah Montana and Zac Efron, of course. The teens and pre-teens that are the subject of the midday coverage on FoxNews when they go missing are the same ones who idolize these stars, perhaps more now than any other generation since Elvis Presley could only be filmed from the waist up. They buy the products they sell, they flock to the latest “High School Musical” movie release. We even had a few lately who wanted to get pregnant after Jamie Lynn Spears’ announced to the world she was expecting. Maybe if we put a few of them on TV talking about the basics of keeping safe again the kids would listen to them then too. Maybe it’s time we started talking about not talking to strangers again. Maybe it’s time we design a “High School Musical” kid-safe browsing software for the web. (Teddy Ruxpin has his own for the younger audience.. btw… at teddyruxpin.com)
Maybe it’s time that we become a little less cynical, and allow kids to hear the message, even if it seems silly to those of us who are big enough to Protect Ourselves.
