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Show Pieces ' JVSihSQy By SUSIE DAVIS I know they're going to come and take me away. "Unfit mother," they'll say. "We have the evidence. Just look at what her son entered at the art fair. It must be a violent household." Yes, that's what I imagined happening hap-pening after the recent art show at our grade school, after seeing what my seven-year-old had entered. He's quite the artist and has a great imagination. He even got honorable honor-able mention last year in the PTA reflections contest for drawing a futuristic, multi-colored car. But this year he was caught up with Rambo. You are probably aware of the Rambo influence everywhere. The movie was edited and shown on T.V. with parental guidance. At our house it was "older teen" guidance. gui-dance. I don't know what I was doing, but the older children watched Rambo and subsequently, so did the younger. The movie is only one part. It started my son's interest in drawing tough men with beards, carrying guns. My muscular 17-year-bld has the poster on his ceiling and he and his friends like to play around with "Rambo-Iike" headbands. And, the man at Fred Meyer had convinced con-vinced me the children would "love" the game, Rambo. Being in a hurry, I bought it without thinking think-ing of the ramifications. You can see we completely "Rambo-ized" "Rambo-ized" before we realized what was happening. Well, getting back to the art fair. The morning came that was the deadline for handing in the art work. We remembered five minutes mi-nutes before the carpool came, even though we had intended to draw something wonderful. Matt ran in, got his Rambo drawing of a tough guy with missiles, drew a balloon out of his mouth that said "kill" (to my consternation) and wrote his name largely in caps, (we couldn't remain anonymous) and entered it in the art fair. Well, the social workers haven't come to take me or Matt away. The teacher didn't call. Matt would rather play with stuffed animals and basketballs basket-balls than guns so I don't think we really need that social worker. And as for Rambo in our lives, when the books "401 Ways to Get Your Kids to Clean Their Rooms," "Children the Challenge," and "Teach Your Children Responsibility" Responsi-bility" had failed me, I decided to ride the tide of this popular movement. move-ment. Spying a discarded Rambo headband on the floor, I put it on and launched a surprise attack. I jumped into the room and yelled, "This is Mombo. Clean up your rooms or else!" Unfortunately, that didn't work either! |