We need to know truth and not have it sugar coated.

I am 55.  I tell you this because even now, at the age I am, I remember vividly certain things that happened when I was a teenager.  Some of the memories are good some not so much ,but the fact that I remember and remember clearly means the moment made a tremendous impact.  So I remember the lights dimming and squirming in my seat because I didn't want to see what I was about to see.  The projector shot the images to the screen, and I wanted to avert my eyes but I couldn't.  I watched trains packed with people pull out of stations, knowing where they were going and the fate that awaited them, even though they didn't.  I watched naked women and children being led into showers, they thinking the dust of the journey was to be washed off, not realizing that the showers sprayed death.  I watched loud men line up weaker men and boys and shoot them, just like that, then shovel dirt over them as they fell into trenches dug for the purpose of burying them.  This was part of my education, this was a day in the life of a Catholic school girl, and I knew it was real, and I knew it was wrong, and I knew I would remember it so that it wouldn't happen again.  And I am grateful for being allowed to see that reality.  I also remember sitting through the movies about growing up.  Seeing my insides in the form of an outline in order to see how the egg was released from the fallopian tube and how it made its way to the uterus, where if it met the little swimming sperm and they connected, it would implant, and if the connection was not made it would be washed away in a sea of blood, better known as menstrual fluid.  And I am glad to have been shown that reality.  My parents never questioned the need for me to see either of these truths, they knew I needed to know.  So I am appalled that a parent wouldn't want their child to see what could be the horrific affects of a person driving while texting.  In today's paper there is an article about a  movie that was shown to students that graphically shows the end result of driving while not paying attention.  Apparently there is even an image of a baby, dead on impact, with eyes frozen open.  That is reality.  I would want my teenager to see it, to remember it, to know it happens and to be the one to say, I won't let it happen again, I won't let it happen to me.  Now, I know some may be offended that I am comparing the events of the Holocaust to texting while driving, I'm not really, but what I am trying to get across is that to protect is to deny and we can't deny.  I am also trying to get across the reality that teenagers are impressionable.  What do you want to impress on them, the truth, or what you think is nice?  I know this is long, but I so want you to get it.

Both of these images are from Flickr
Rosemary