My kids and I were sniffling as we prepared to move. The dust hesitated in the air, and like a swarming mob crowded into the crevices of our sinuses. That made the task of prepping to move more and more miserable by the moment. Then at the height of my misery, I came across a picture that rescued forgotten memories long missing in action tucked irretrievably just outside my consciousness.

I chuckled at rogue roommates, silly siblings and funny friends. The grunge of basement grit covering me was overpowered by the satisfaction of revisiting beautiful people, wonderful places and wondrous things. I had the proof to tell the stories. So, how to share in a post Kodak mindset? I could post these pics to the Kodak gallery, load them on flicker, create a PowerPoint presentation or . . .?

Or, I could use them as the beginning salvos in the greatest Facebook picture war known to mankind. Of course my flair for the dramatic may overstate my aims just a tad, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to shoot for the stars. The more I pondered, the more I realized we needed a Geneva Convention of sorts on how to war fairly. I do believe in fair war, so what follows is a delineation of the rules of combat for a well executed honorable Facebook war that will leave friends and family just that, friends and family.

Rules of Engagement

1 – Know your subject well enough before posting:

Do not post pictures of someone as the main subject if you do not know them well. This is in poor taste. As a rule of thumb, if your response to randomly spotting them in the mall is a lukewarm hand gesture, chances are, you two are NOT not on it like that. No pictures for you.

If, on the other hand, you knock an elderly person to the ground while making a bee line to greet them, you’re good. Post away. If there are others in the picture who are not the main focus of the pic and you a.) don’t know their name, or b.) don’t care what their name is, fa-get-about-it. We call these folks fb pic war collateral damage. It’s expected that a certain number of these folks will get trapped on your Facebook page.

2- No pictures of children whom you are not related to:

On a serious note, protecting others should always be in the forefront of our minds when posting online. To this end, be mindful of posting pics of children whom you are not related to because some parents are extremely protective of their children’s privacy. Many of them have good reason to be.

3- Be mindful of relationship status prior to posting:

You know when your significant other asks the question, “did you have a xxxxxx with so and such?” By not posting previous relationship pics, you uphold their answer, regardless of their answer. Other folks simply have a tremendous amount of pride, and if they see who their significant other has dated in the past, they may be extremely insulted and terminate the relationship on the spot!!

4- No compromising photos:

It’s important to recognize that people grow. We all are hopefully smarter and wiser than we were during earlier periods of our lives. It’s mean spirited and calamitous to knowingly post photos of others in situations or scenes that would jeopardize their relationship, their job or their security. I know posting a compromising pic of your ex seems like an equitable way to repay them for that wonderful gift they left you with, but, you will appear as the villain and you can’t undue what you’ve done. This also applies to posting ugly pics of models and could even extend to posting pics of people you know who are now “famous.” When in doubt, refer to rule #1.

5- Move when asked to remove:

Be responsible for the pics you post. If the person whom you have added or tagged requests that you remove their picture, do it promptly. Now be mindful some folks are a little bashful and some are hard of hearing, so depending on which side you fall you may need to request harder or BS better.

6- Post with a sincere heart:

The cardinal rule of thumb is to post in love and appreciation. Be mindful, your FB Pic War has the potential to touch, move and inspire!! How great is it to share with others the beautiful people whom your life has been blessed with? Isn’t it also motivating to reflect on where your life has taken you? At the end of the day, your FB Pic War should be about bringing family and friends closer. Keep this in your heart and win lose or draw, your war will have been worth it.

A couple of weeks back, the subject was dodged but I knew the topic was far from buried.  Sex. An interesting albeit over saturated topic in the adult world , is an intriguing, embarrassing, funny,  engrossing and disgusting conversation for an inquisitive 10 and a snickering soon-to-be 9 year old.

I know, I know be honest, deal with it first go round. I’ve heard it and read it, but truth be told, my imagination just got the best of me.  Like a 50’s black and white reel with grainy oddly moving images, I  imagined remorseful adults locked up in the pokey, confessing to cellmates in possession of mom tattoos that the origins of their devious ways began when their dad screwed up “the talk.” I pictured them crying as they lamented of their downward spiral, led astray by their very own father.

Sounds absurd, but through the fuzzy channel of an unfocused brain, the words I chose somehow had the power to usher them from the innocent Eden devoid of sexual implications to a world suddenly saturated with it.

I didn’t possess the perfect beginnings for “the talk”,  so careless parenting stepped in courtesy of a local events mag entitled Creative Loafing. A city paper whose budget appeared to be on an extreme diet judging by the dwindling number of pages produced week by week. But I digress.

Creative Loafing, (bad daddy!!)

To understate a fact would be to say that Creative Loafing is NOT a kid friendly paper. Kid friendly in the sense that a child in possession of the magazine,  moderate reading skills and a desire to pass the time would feel they were doing a great job. Even if they hadn’t taken the trash out, they would realize they hadn’t gotten a tattoo, a piercing, called a singles chat line, hooked up on the local dateline, redeemed a Starship 1/2 off coupon, gotten botox or silicon breast implants.

Maybe once every couple of months I grab the magazine out of habit to see which bands are coming to town or review a particular cover story (seriously) or check out what’s going on in Atlanta. On occasion, I’ve needed to make a quick pit stop to clean the car after hearing the kids snicking at images of men holding hands on the inside pages or the scantily clad women urging them to dial 1-800-hot-pants. Aside from these minor incidents, nothing major ever came out of the not-so-often habit.

So, I thought nothing of picking the paper up on the way out of the library with my son about a week ago. We made it home and began cooking dinner without incident. While taking a break from the grill, I stopped by my office to see my son hunched over the newly collected paper, reading intently.

“What’cha reading, ” I inquired.

He lifted the paper up and pointed to the cover story without missing a beat. The story, “35  Years,” covered the details of a young man’s conviction for rape in Atlanta. I asked him, “is that something you think you should be reading?” He pauses, looks at me and comes to the sudden realization, “uhhhhh . . . No?”

Panicked and intrigued, I sit opposite him at the desk and ask him to tell me about what he’d read to that point. Eager to display his reading comprehension he proceeded to tell me. He spoke as a teacher would  impart wisdom to students and related his understanding that a man forcing himself on a women is called rape. He was satisfied that the penalty handed down, which was 35 years in jail, was a good sentence. His understanding was rudimentary and fundamental. That was oddly reassuring in that he didn’t really get the emotional human cost associated with the act. I realized that we were in a unique moment.

“How far did you get,” I asked, attempting to mask my concern. He pointed to the top of the second page. The time for the talk was at hand. Not a day later, not an hour later, not even five minutes later, but at that exact moment the time had come.

His response led to the instinctive question, “what is sex.” He smiled and giggled, coyly saying, “you know.” He moved his hands while giggling to indicate a motion for sex that only silly kids can make funny and not obscene. Drawn in by the giggles, his sister soon waltzed into the room and found a place on the floor, eager to add everything she knew and had heard from her friends to the conversation.

What followed over the next 45 minutes was an inquisitive, funny, serious and poignant conversation lead more by the children with me simply providing points of clarification I was amazed at some of the questions.

Can lesbians have children?

Can you die from having sex?

When I get married, do I have to take my clothes of to have children?

Did you and mommy have sex?

Can old people have babies?

The last was a great question that lead to my daughter running for her Bible to read to us the story of Sara and Abraham when they doubted God’s ability to give them a child.

All and all, the article albeit extremely scary, was a great starting point for our conversation. The hope was that they could feel comfortable asking their parents anything about sex. But I realized that the infamous talk is really not, “the talk.” It is she be called the introduction because it was simply the first step in a long road to teaching them how to effectively choose boyfriends and girlfriends and hopefully, soul mates that will strengthen them as children of God and lead them away from behaviors that would put them in harms way.

There were a couple of things that I learned and here they are:

1 – Get rid of any creative loafing and treat them like the plague if you have 8+ year old children. If you read them, read ‘em BEFORE you get home.

2- Similarly, find a mild mannered bock or article that deals with the topic, it’s much easier to start by finding out what they ALREADY know. This way you can be in control of how the conversation is initiated.

3-By getting your kids talking about their understanding of sex, it’s much easier to help guide them through the conversation and give them exactly what they need and not too much.

Good luck parents.

If I told you my son drew the picture to the left, you might be disturbed. You might consider the fact that my son is a 10 year old fourth grader. As the neurons in your brain fired, you would have to reconcile the sheer violence in the picture with the experiences of a silly fourth grader. What does the picture say about his life?

Sure, you could chalk it up to his over abundance of imagination, but, quietly, in the back of your mind, the details might touch you where alarms can’t be silenced. Your eyes would dart feverishly, feeding details to your brain. Though you might be calm, your pulse would quicken and you would start mentally listing who you could call. The detail of the black guns, the curved clips, the wooden handles and the bursting muzzle fire would shake you. You would continue the silent debate over whether to call for help or mind your own business.

Indecisive, you wouldn’t call anyone as you continued looking desperately, frantically for reassurance that everything was ok. And this was all a joke. I would be sad to inform you that this drawing is not a joke. Who could you tell? Who could make sense of it? Who could explain it away?

You would hope this was a normal child expressing a vivid imagination. But we both know, the imagination birthed by crayons couldn’t explain the clarity of vision and the details of destruction clutched between your sweaty fingers. The crimson shades awkwardly registering against the neutral grays tell you something is very wrong. Not only because it exists, but because of its abundance. Like it, the number of bullets ricocheting across the paper would leave a lump in the pit of your stomach.

After you looked at the paper you could ignore the voice in your head, or you could do something. What would you do?

The picture above was actually drawn by a child in Chad as part of Drawings of Genocide. Young children caught in the chaos of war see things we wouldn’t let American children see on TV. But know that WE know it isn’t a child we know, does it make a difference? If so, why?

I am humbled to know where I’ve been placed and despite a shaky economy, and a shrinking dollar, my kids draw pictures I can hang in my office or on the fridge. Hopefully, God willing, we can make a difference for someone else’s child so they can draw beautiful pictures of life and not gruesome scenes of death.

Here is how you can help children of Genocide in Darfur and other countries. I hope that anyone might take a small stand, no matter how small it is to bless someone else’s child with a brighter future. You can take a peek at:

OurPledge.org