Little Eyes and Thomas Edison’s Mama
I have mentioned before the wonderful children’s song:
Be careful little eyes what you see.
Be careful little eyes what you see.
The Father up above is looking down in love,
So be careful little eyes what you see.
As a mama, I always believed it — really I did. That’s why what happened during a typical school day in 1999 was such a shock. This day was a few months before two momentous events in our lives.
- We were still about four or five months away from July 1, 1999, when Ray left his role as full-time minister to start Notgrass Company.
- We were about five or six months away from mid-August of that same year when Ray’s daddy moved in with us permanently.
On this particular typical school day, we were going through a decade by decade study of the history of the twentieth century, Ray was at the church office, and Ray’s daddy was at home with us during a visit.
I had had the brilliant idea of watching movies related to each decade — at least I had thought it was a brilliant idea. It really did work out quite well — usually. This day was an exception.
At mid-day we got our lunch together and went into the family room to watch a VHS video I had picked up at the local library. The subject was some of the first movies ever made. There was no rating on the box. Very early movies sounded safe to me.
We all sat down — John, Bethany, Mary Evelyn, and Granddaddy Wes — and began to watch the video. To my horror, the people on that television screen were naked — downright neck-ed as we said in our Southern drawl while I was growing up! “They’re naked!” I exclaimed and I hopped up to push the stop button!
Yesterday I was working on a lesson for From Adam to Us about inventions of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Ray had written a few paragraphs about movie camera inventors and early movies. I was editing and adding photographs. I like what I found. The lesson now has an early movie advertisement from Thomas Edison’s company, a picture of Thomas Edison and George Eastman with a movie camera, U.S. stamps honoring The Great Train Robbery and one honoring Al Jolson, the singer who played the lead in The Jazz Singer, plus a picture of sound technicians preparing to show The Jazz Singer in Australia around the time that it came out.
We also had some information about an Englishman who was involved in film; and, since this is world history, after all, we thought about including a sentence or two about him. I searched our photo source for a picture to go along with the sentences, when uh-oh! I didn’t hang around to find out, but I think this guy must have been the one who produced some of that film snippet I accidentally showed to our children — and my father-in-law (for crying out loud) back in 1999 — at least the pictures I found were very similar!
What’s the moral to this story? Well, if we are going to be extra-careful about what our children’s little eyes see, it seems like previewing is a very good idea!
Of course, there is no mention of that Englishman, Mr. What’s His Name, in From Adam to Us. Whew! That was a close one.
I will set no worthless thing before my eyes . . .
Psalm 101:3