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To youth, therefore, it should be carefully inculcated, that to enter the road of life without caution or reserve, in expectation of general fidelity and justice, is to launch on the wide ocean without the instruments of steerage, and to hope that every wind will be prosperous, and that every coast will afford a harbour ~Samuel Johnson

Last week, we took Flip and his friend, Kevin, to the Franklin Institute. (I'd never been before, and it was fantastic, but that's not the point here.) Kevin, two years older, wanted to go through the CSI exhibit, and Flip readily agreed. It was an interactive exhibit where visitors are assigned a crime scene and asked to use forensic clues to solve the murder at the end. I enjoyed it, though I couldn't help but wonder about the society we live in, where kids are exposed to so much violence, either in media or in person, that a staged murder scene doesn't faze them at all. Having never experienced anything close to such a scene in real life, shouldn't we be flinching, recoiling, gagging? And yet, there was our group, adults and children alike, eagerly making crime scene sketches and examining the gruesome evidence with an absurd amount of clinical detachment.

The level of desensitization was appalling. Are we immune to murder? Obviously, it's fake at the museum, and I'd like to think that we'd behave very differently if such a scene were to play out in front of our eyes, but even then, I think the fear would come more from thinking whether the killer would be after us next rather than thinking the blood and gore was horrific. Watching a show like Bones every week, I know I am hardly put off anymore by bugs and organs and skeletons popping out from random places. Is this okay? Should it be normal?

There was no indication that Flip was disturbed by the exhibit at all until he climbed in bed that night. Suddenly, he was freaked out by the dark, cried that the exhibit had been "creepy," and couldn't sleep by himself. He wasn't as desensitized as it would have seemed. I'm guessing he didn't want to seem like a baby in front of his peers, but I wish he'd said something to me privately. I hate that he went through the whole thing when he really didn't want to. I get that kids sometimes have to be pushed to face their fears - and there seems to be more pressure on boys, as the terms "man up" and "grow a pair" are used to discourage wimpiness - but is it so wrong to want my brother to stay innocent for a little bit longer?

Why shouldn't he be scared to look at a dead body, even if it is just a mannequin? Kids don't need more exposure to violent visuals; they need less. Flip doesn't need more toy guns; in fact, he doesn't need any. I don't mean to be all sunshine and butterflies, but I am firmly in the camp that desensitization to violence in media affects children's perception of violence in real life. Maybe playing death-ridden video games doesn't make kids kill other kids, but I think playing them makes kids think killing is a little less terrible and a little more cool.

Some day down the line, Flip might want to be a medical examiner (as I did), and maybe he'll enjoy dissecting animals (as I did), and maybe he won't be as scared of blood and guts (nope, still grossed out). Maybe he'll even be a forensic scientist when he grows up. But for now, I want him to stay sensitized, to blur the line between play and reality a little, to be a kid just a while longer.