This Week in Rhetoric

Just recently, I saw a car which carried a bumpersticker which proclaimed:

My Child Saves Lives
AAA Crossing Guard Safety Council

While I'm sure that this declaration was meant to soothe and impress me, it had quite the opposite effect. Your child...saves...lives? I am appalled! What has happened to our civilization that warrants children leaving their haven of childhood to save the lives of those in danger? Tyler! Out of control Hummer—shoot out its tires! Sally! Speeding Mazda—get that blind nun out of the way!

I draw your attention to syntax here to note the seeming disparity between the word "child"—which usually constitutes a very young person—and the concept of "saving lives"—which is usually a task reserved for older people. Might it be more palatable to exclaim "My Child Preserves Lives?" I mean, that's what a crossing guard does, right? Take perfectly good people and enable them to cross intersections? But, you might argue, the streets are more dangerous than they once were. I am perfectly willing to believe that, but I won't believe that this fact justifies continuing to place children in traffic. Here's an idea for a bumper sticker:

What's more this bumper sticker's proclamation—"My Child Saves Lives"—is made within an organizational setting "Crossing Guard Safety Council" sponsored by AAA. This means that the person sticking the bumper sticker is smug and happy putting his or her child in certain danger. Where's Billy? Out saving lives. Isn't he eight!?! Ok, ok, you might argue, this is just a syntactical slip and doesn't mean anything. Well, a trip on over to the AAA Newsroom will show you that, between 2003 and 2004, they went from awarding "Patroller of the Year" awards to awarding "Lifesaver" awards. That's right, kids, prepare to die. Call me crazy—I'm so overprotective of my kids that I won't let them out of the womb—but that doesn't mean that I want other people's children in harm's way, either.