BUCKING THE SYSTEM: ONLY EDUCATION CAN CHASE AWAY BOOGEYMAN

is column originally ran Jan. 25, 1997.

I'm a nosy person, which often helps me as a reporter.

I like to join other people's conversations, and the offended down-the-nose stares they give me do not deter me from giving my opinion when I think I need to.

It was not so long ago that I listened in on a parenthood discussion while sitting under the hair dryer at a local beauty shop. Two young women were joking about the sex of their future children, and they both said they only wanted to have daughters, not sons.

Here was a topic I had a definite opinion on. I was pregnant, and I had to speak up.

"Not me," I said as I peaked from under the dryer's dome and saw my way into the A and B conversation. "I can't do my own hair, much less somebody else's."

Then one of the women made a comment that I had forgotten about until I learned of Ennis Cosby's tragic death. "I don't want any sons," she said quietly. "I don't want to have to attend my own son's funeral."

It's a sad fact that our young people are dying.

My first experience with violent death occurred just after my sister's graduation in 1993. She lost one of her very first friends and classmates when he was killed by someone he had an argument with earlier in the day. Not a fight; an argument.

Although I'm just shy of my 26th birthday, I remember a time when violence wasn't commonplace, and an argument didn't result in death. I'm a child of the 70s, which means there were many nights that I ran home, but not because someone was after me or because someone had fired a gun. I was running because the streetlights had started to sizzle and I knew I had to be inside the door before they actually came on.

"In my day," an argument progressed to a fight only after the proper ritual of bumping shoulders, and people didn't die at the park. And the only sex game I knew was "Catch a girl, Get a girl." I wasn't fast, but I was fast enough.

Nowadays our children have so much going on in their lives. They have to worry about what to wear, where to play, and even when to go outside. Adults have the same worries, but it seems so much more pitiful to see them in the faces of our children.

Once upon a time, the boogeyman was an imaginary monster. He hid under beds and in closets, and his most heinous crimes were figments of my imagination. I knew what he looked like, but I also knew if I called my mom or dad, they would turn on the light and he'd disappear.

Today the boogeyman is very real. He doesn't hide, and his crimes are real rather than imaginary. He looks like everybody and anybody, and it's going to take a lot more than my parents and a 60-watt lightbulb to make him disappear.

It's going to take education; it's going to take economics; and it's going to take empowerment. Students need to be taught morals and values and to be provided with the proper training in the home before they enter the schools. Once they enter the schools, they need to use that home training to sit still and LEARN something. They need to leave their schools and seek higher training, whether it's from a college, a trade school, a seminary or whatever.

That's a message that's worth repeating over and over and over again. The only way we're going to get rid of the boogeyman is to wipe out the prejudices that rule small minds, towns and administrations. If we quit looking at all of the things that make everyone so different, we might be able to discover exactly how alike we are.

And then maybe the boogie man will see the light ... and disappear.