DADWAGON

Ah, yes, the joys of being in the news business. One minute I’m planning a leisurely cookout yesterday evening for a friend in the Army stationed overseas who’s on leave and (happily) stuck stateside because of all the ash. The next, I’m packing my little roller-bag headed for (way too) sunny downtown Phoenix, where I’ll try to get excited about eating a room service club sandwich at the Sheraton in a town where I know no one.

It is actually part of the pleasure of the job. I’ve got happy feet, the kind that can only come from growing up on a 3 mile by 5 mile rock in the middle of the ocean. But there’s something about being dad, where you spend so much time trying to get your kids on a regular schedule–where that regularity is sold as a key to everyone’s well-being–that makes me wonder if it doesn’t mess with my head to jump on airplanes moment to moment and to not really know when I’ll be back. And, of course, the potential trauma for kids whose dad suffers these mini-deployments from time to time.

Although using the d-word (deployment) reminds me that my brief troubles are but a spittle in the vast ocean of suck that is deploying away from your kids because you’re, say, a soldier. I wrote about Fayetteville’s extraordinary mass baby shower in TIME a while back — all pregnant women whose husbands were away with the 82nd Airborne. It’s hard to think about what those families were going through and work up much pity for myself.

If you really need someone to pity on the DadWagon, it should actually be poor Christopher, Theodore, and Matt, who will have to somehow make this site run without my frequent and glorious contributions this week.

In the meantime, watch this for some throwback Arizoniana, via Hollywood.

(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

Don’t freak out! The disgusting and disturbing photo you see to the right is not your child’s face Photoshopped onto Newt Gingrich’s body. It’s some other parent’s kid. So relax. Because this frightening scenario didn’t happen to you.

But it could! And it could be worse, right? Certainly: It could be Harry Reid’s face on your daughter’s body.

What it’s not likely to be, however, is truly pornographic. Nor is a stalker likely to find the pictures you took of your kids, triangulate their whereabouts based on Facebook and Foursquare postings, and then move in for the kill. In fact, putting your kids’ photos on the Internet is not dangerous—just as the New York Times reported last fall:

“Research shows that there is virtually no risk of pedophiles coming to get kids because they found them online,” said Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute. While the debate makes this crime seem common, he said, all the talk is really just “techno-panic.”

And yet, it’s still a terrifying prospect, isn’t it? Just knowing that it’s techno-panic doesn’t erase the fear that something awful might possibly one day  happen. We may be rational people, but when kids are involved, reason goes out the window.

All I can do is speak from personal experience, having put images and video of my daughter, Sasha, in one of the most visible places in the world: the New York Times. You can see her at restaurants in Venice, getting a bath in a hotel room, and playing on the swings in San Francisco. Her actual name is there, and it’s not too hard to find out where we live. Has anything unpleasant happened as a result of this? Nope. Sasha’s never been recognized on the street, or anywhere else.

I realize this may sound like a call to the crazies to come get us, but honestly, the crazies have better, more efficient, and more insidious ways of getting to our kids, like finding them in chat rooms (although I’m skeptical of the stats on that) or, I don’t know, becoming Catholic priests. Child pornographers tend to use actual children in their crimes, not random, poorly PhotoShopped images. (If the latter were the case, it would almost be a victimless crime—although seriously creepy and probably still illegal.) And although we freak out over stranger danger, 87 percent of the almost 900,000 American children abused (in one way or another) in 2004 suffered at the hand of one or both parents, according to the National Center for Victims of Crime, and three-quarters of sexually assaulted teens were victims of people they knew well.

So, should you post your kids’ pictures on Facebook, Flickr and wherever else? If all you’re worried about is safety, then go for it. It won’t endanger your child. (There may, of course, be a moral or cultural argument against putting kids’ pictures online, but I’ll leave it to another ‘wagoneer to go in that direction.)

Of course, if you’re terrified of running into a picture like this one to the right, then by all means keep the photos on the fridge, where they belong. Just remember to keep Uncle Al, Sally the teenage babysitter, the Fresh Direct delivery guys, and probably every member of your immediate family—including yourself—out of the kitchen. Can’t be too careful, you know.

Following up on this morning’s post regarding philosophy class for seven-year-olds, direct from Losanjealous:

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

I really like the title, too: The Nietzsche Family Circus.

Most of the time when I take Sasha to a playground, I interact very little with the other parents. Sasha’s still very young, and needs to be watched, or to have her hand held, as she climbs up wooden stairs and yells “Whee!” as she cruises down a slide.

But yesterday, for whatever reason, she seemed able to take care of herself, enthusiastically pushing some other kid’s toy stroller around the playground, where she was the youngest of about six kids. And so I relaxed, stood away from her, and wound up talking, briefly, with a mother there.

She was a bit older than me, wearing sunglasses, and had two kids there, about 2 and 3 years old. I don’t really remember what we were saying to each other, but then another mom walked by, a baby strapped to her chest, a cell phone at her ear, and Sunglasses Mom said this: “She’s been on the phone for, like, an hour and a half!”

I don’t know how I reacted, or if I reacted at all, but it took me aback. I mean, I’d heard about playground bitchiness, about the one-ups-manship between parents. I’ve seen “Little Children” (or at least the parts where Kate Winslet’s naked).

But WTF? Who cares? Phone Lady’s other kid, a very sweet 2-year-old who without prompting shared his toys with Sasha, was running around having a great time on his own, and the kid on her chest was asleep. Fine, she wanted to talk on the phone for a while, so she did. If she’s anything like me, Phone Lady probably felt guilty doing so, just as I feel like a shithead for checking my iPhone while Sasha’s in the stroller, but the fact is, sometimes our kids don’t particularly need our attention. They’re either playing on their own, or just sitting there looking at the world (i.e., being booooring), and if you ignore the kid for a few minutes (or, like, an hour and a half), they will not self-destruct, Child Protective Services will not whisk them away, and you will not be labeled a Bad, Bad Parent.

Except by Sunglasses Mom.