Our family was having dinner when the power went out leaving us in the dimly lit house, wondering what was going on. The boys where distraught to think that we had NO power to run their games and the TV. I, being more practical pointed out that we had no heat, light, or water.

“No water?” exclaimed my youngest boy. “How are we going to flush the toilets?”

My oldest boy said that it was going to be okay, we can just GO in the back yard.

I had to smile, and ask the boys if they thought that Dad didn’t have a plan for just such an occasion, already having stashed away 5 gallons of water.

My older son looked at me with the most distraught look and said “Dad, NEVER pass on the chance to GO in the back yard!”

I received a phone call that all parents hate to get from “The School” it was the Vice Principal. The first thought I had was are the boys OK and what did they do now! He quickly assured me that all was good and that neither boy was in trouble. He went on to say that the reason he was calling was that my oldest boy had shared a tidbit of information that I had given him, my heart stopped having shared lots of useless information with him in the past. It seems that he had told some classmates that drinking form a garden hose can cause cancer. Well I explained, I had bought a hose and there was a warning on it that said just that. In a panic I began to look it up on the Internet, quickly finding the information on consumerreports.org.

After reading the article to the Vice Principal an vowing to bring in a copy of it for him, he explained that he was being pro-active, fearing that some of the students would go home and pass this information on with no proof that it was true. The moral of the story is that EVERY THING that you tell your kids may be passes on at one point, so use caution!