Celebrate anonymously, please

Last night, I found myself behind a big SUV being driven - I assume - by a proud papa of two young soccer players: Erinn & Danielle. The proud papa also had on his SUV a license plate holder pointing out that his child was an honors student at Bloomfield Elementary on the back of the SUV monstrosity.

Now, about a month ago, I probably wouldn't have given the sticker and license holder a second thought. But that was before my wife pointed out a little something that she learned when she was in elementary school. It was in the early part of her elementary school career that Adam Walsh was kidnapped from a department store in Florida. Somewhere along the line after that kidnapping, an adult mentioned Adam's name to my future wife and told her how important it was for parents to not provide information about their children to strangers.

Every bit of information about a child that is randomly given to the world could just as easily be being given to a pedophile who might use that information in the future.

Preventing such information from getting into the wrong hands is along the lines of not letting underaged kids put their names and pictures out on the internet, telling them not to talk to strangers, and to not go anywhere with anyone other than their parents (and, sadly, sometimes not even with those in cases of estrangement and divorce).

So, the next time a friend of yours slaps a big softball sticker on the back of their car celebrating their three kids who play softball, remind them to at least not include their names. You'd be surprised how many of those stickers end up right next to another one that says which school they go to.

It doesn't take much information to do something bad...