Dangerous?

First of all, I'll say right off the top that I do NOT believe in child molestation.

But, some wording on GMA this morning kind of has me scratching my head in bafflement.

You see, there is another teacher/student scenario in the news; the difference in this one compared to many others is that this time, the student was shot by the teacher's husband. That in itself is a tremendous and horrific tragedy. And now, the teacher, along with her two boys has disappeared, presumably to California. And, in the meantime, the teacher had gotten a job in another school where she once again began a quest to entice another young man.

In the first case, the boy was 18; although I can't say for certain, I believe the age of consent in TN is 18. However, this young man was still a student. Right there that made it wrong for the teacher to seduce the student.

A teacher, no matter what, should know that the students, not only in their charge, but in the school are OFF LIMITS. Completely. Totally.

But, we've seen repeated instances where teachers abuse this and blithely think nothing of enticing a student to extra curricular activities.

Now, from the report I heard this morning, the second student the teacher attempted to seduce was a 17 year old. Absolutely wrong, just on the age issue. Of course, there are many other issues that are wrong with it as well.

With all that being said, let me once again emphasize that I am against crimes against children.

But, here's what bothered me about the news report. The reporter stated that the situation the boys had found themselves in was dangerous.

It's the use of the word "dangerous" that has me scratching my head.

Have things changed in the years since I was a teen in the later stages of "teendom"?

We girls drooled over the hot, young, single male teachers that were at our school. We imagined sweeping him off his feet, not only imagining those straight A's we'd get in his class, but also imagining the delights we might find in other aspects of a relationship.

The boys weren't any better. They were just more vocal about it, while we girls tended to only whisper that stuff to our friends at slumber parties when the lack of sleep loosened our tongues.

The boys would say things like, "Hey, wouldn't you like to get a look at those?" or, "Miss SexPot makes me get a boner! I'd like to get a piece of that!"

Let's face it. We were teenagers, erotically charged and by golly if we would have had a snowball's chance in hell of actually following through....chances are we would have.

But, teachers had enough sense to know that in those days if they would have even entertained a single thought in that direction and acted upon it, no legalities would have prevented the townsfolk from dragging the person out and beating the tar out of him or her. We're not talking about a lynching or a shooting, but a good old-fashioned fist pounding, guaranteed to leave bumps and bruises that would have let the students know as well that unacceptable behavior had occurred. A woman teacher might not have been beaten; instead she might have found herself and her belongings packed roughly and thrown out of town. The old double standard was there; the man would have probably been able to keep his job because it was more important for a man to earn a living; a woman could 'find herself a man' to support her.

But, dangerous? Stupid, YES. In the case of older teens, hardly dangerous. They're already thinking about sex. ALL the time. There are still shotgun weddings when a boy knocks up a girl. But let's hope that they're both under legal age, else the older one will not only be in a shotgun wedding, but will find himself or herself on the sex offenders registry for abusing a juvenile.

We 'tsk-tsk' in dismay when we hear about 13 year olds having babies and the father is only 15. But, sex still occurred, didn't it? Only the social demographics were different, so a cluck of the tongue is the response.

(My personal response would be, "But, where the fuck were the parents?", but that's a soapbox I'm not pulling out to stand on right now.)

The teacher needs to be found. But, in a strange turn of events, the teacher has not been charged with any sort of crime. She's just fled the scene. She could probably say that she did so because her husband shot the young man she was seducing. She could say she fled because she was afraid for her life. That's what she could SAY.

Okay, so the temptation to crawl on the soapbox has become too tempting to resist. Here goes.

We, as a society, need to look at the situation we have put our children into. The children have 'role models' like Paris Hilton, or Beyonce or others who use seduction or 'suggestion' in their acts. We think nothing of letting kids watch movies that they really don't need to see. We have television shows like Desperate Housewives which give a whole new meaning to the workings of a neighborhood.

And, then we're surprised when our children become interested in sexual behavior? Why are we surprised?

Record numbers of children are being abused by friends of the family, or 'funny uncles'. And teachers. And priests. And so on and so forth. Abuse of the young is WRONG.

But, there comes a time when we need to realize that a child may not be the complete innocent in a sexual adventure. We just have to be smart enough to keep our own heads out of our collective arses and pay attention! We, as parents, grandparents, day care providers, and so on need to be constantly teaching morality to our kids. We need to dress them appropriately, no matter what the other kids are wearing; we need to talk to them about behavior patterns that could endanger them. We need to know where they are and who they're with. We need to be active and proactive parents and role models.

We need to begin remembering that when we point a finger, there are three others pointing right back at us.

And, we need to remember. We need to remember our own feelings and desires when we were at a particular age. We need to begin using the appropriate descriptives, like 'stupid' instead of 'dangerous'.

We need to bring the control back to home and hearth *first*. Then we need to loosen that control in delicate measures as we find our children can handle it. We need to quit being the surprised reactionaries when good kids stray off some moral code that we've not bothered to teach them. We need to remember what it was like when we were their age - yes, it may be a VERY scary thought to realize your children might have the same wants and desires that you did, but until we understand that, we are just plain stupid AND dangerous when we expect others in society to pick up our slack.