There have been a number of times when hopefully my children have learned from me.. from both my mistakes and my successes. But as each parent knows, there are many times we can learn from them. One of those times that I will never forget was when our children were young. As a family we made a pact that we were not going to see “R” rated movies. We just decided that we don’t want to fill our minds with the stuff that is often shown in films with that rating. I knew and know that some PG13 movies can be bad too but we felt that we had to draw a line in the sand somewhere and it was pretty easy to do when the film was rated “R”. Well, this one time we went to Blockbuster Video to rent a movie for the kids and while we were there we were going to get one for myself and Deb. The children picked out an approved movie and I was left to look at all the latest hits to get one Mom & Dad. Well, I saw one that had interested me for a long time. It was the movie with Bruce Willis called “Die Hard”- him fighting off a bunch of terrorists in a high rise office building. I’ve always liked rough and tumble movies, like Dirty Harry, etc. So, I was standing looking at the movie cover. To my chagrin I noticed it was rated "R" but sice I wanted to see it I began to rationalize -"Well, it’s rated that way because of violence, not because of sex. And maybe there are a few words of profanity but after all the children won’t be watching this one.” And just as I decided I was certainly old enough to watch this movie I looked down and there was my son, Zachary, 5 years old at the time, looking up at me. He said, "What movie did you pick Daddy? Can I see?" I said, "No, this one is just one for Mommy and Daddy see."
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