Listen. In some countries, if you go down to the river to scoop up some water for dinner, you might get eaten by a crocodile. In other countries, you might suddenly get blown to smithereens by a righteous missile because the café next door to your house is making lunch for a “rebel leader.” In some places, taking a walk off the beaten path can mean finding a forgotten landmine the hard way. You get no warning for any of these things.

         Meanwhile, here in America, it’s nothing but warnings. Vending machines have a sticker on them advising you to not tip the machine over onto yourself. Most are text-free graphic illustrations of what happens: it will crush you and you will have a pained expression. It is a moment captured--he (it never seems to be a woman in these graphics) isn't squished yet, but it's clear he won't be enjoying the free candy.

         Diagrams like this are all over the place, giving us fair warning that a spinning lawnmower blade might pose a hazard, or that you might get a shock if you reach into the guts of your television set. There’s usually a drawing of the act of stupidity with a circle-slash symbol on top of it. Home appliances show somebody reaching towards that spinning blade. It’s the “before the accident” drawing. On commercial equipment, where injuries mean lost production, you get the more brutal “after” shot. Severed fingers. Lines radiating away from the hand, indicating pain.

         It’s getting hard to find anything lacking a warning sticker of some kind. They’re starting to cry wolf. When a kid’s Superman costume says “Does not enable wearer to fly,” or the iron says “Do not iron clothes while on the body,” or the Nytol Sleep Aid package says “Warning, may cause drowsiness,” you start to tune it all out. It’s just a matter of time before you see something like  "Do not place banjo in eye or use it as a parachute."

         American kids are really presumed stupid. Not long ago I saw a television ad urging kids to wait until the school bus stops moving before trying to get off. Here we make a big deal about Darwinism being taught in the schools, and then we interfere in the process.

         If anyone wanted to preserve my young life, they should have put their educational dollars into demonstrating how experimental fires involving gasoline and plastics can get out of hand. Or how bicycle braking distances increase on gravel. Or how to deal with mean dogs. These were the real hazards.

         But no. I got lots of information about blasting caps, tooth plaque, and nuclear explosions. I was led to believe that these were the three leading causes of death for third graders.

         The tooth plaque thing got downright evangelical. We had lectures, workshops, filmstrips, the works. We chewed blue tablets that stained the parts on our teeth where we didn't brush well enough. Of course, half of us (guess which half) thought blue teeth were cool, so we pocketed as many tabs as we could, didn't brush, and chewed them at recess, competing for the bluest teeth prize.

         The blasting cap information was really weird. Blasting caps are used to detonate dynamite. Being in the ‘burbs, I’m pretty sure nobody had blasted anything for a hundred years. Still, there were these posters everywhere showing the ten most common blasting caps so that we would make sure not to touch them. Sure. Once we knew what they looked like, we looked for them everywhere. We had plans for them.

         And of course back then we had to prepare for surviving The Bomb, which was a notch more plausible than finding a blasting cap. Vietnam was in full swing, whatever that was. We saw our demise dozens of times, again in filmstrips, films, and poster form. Duck and Cover, the jingle and cartoon that taught us to hit the deck when we saw the blast, was already pretty old but still common. It made surviving the blast look so fun! PHHT! No school! No adults! Just us and Myrtle the Turtle, who had better hope we don't run out of food.

         We were reminded again that we should not look at the blast, for it would melt our eyes, but we knew deep in our impulsive little hearts that we would not, should the time come, be able to prevent ourselves from looking at the blast.

         As we crouched under out desks during bomb drills, we assumed that when we were grown up, we would not have to be treated like dumb cattle any more. We were wrong. We now live where signs at vista stops warn us not to get too close to the edge of the cliff. Thanks, but no thanks. I can think for myself now. I know that when I see that nucular flash, I'll be safest under the candy machine.