Never trust a dude in a van

I just remembered an incident from my childhood today that is having a serious effect on how I will parent my own kids. When I was nine or ten, I was riding my bike home from the park down the "main" street of my cozy suburban neighborhood. I may have been coming home from soccer practice, or baseball practice, something like that. When I came to the top of a hill, I got off my bike to start walking it, because my legs were weak (let's be charitable and say it was due to sports practice and not general weakness, no matter how much evidence there is for the latter). Just then, a van pulled over, and a man got out. He had scraggly hair and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He was also wearing sunglasses. He asked if I would like to see some baseball cards he had in the back of his van.

Now, I had heard plenty about talking to strangers by this point in my life. Crime Dog McGruff had gotten the message through. Sure, I hestitated. But this was at the height of my baseball card love, and the guy seemed friendly, and we were in my own neighborhood. I figured I didn't have to get in the van. He could just open the back door and we could sit on the fender and look at the albums on the street, in public.

That's exactly what happened.

I said, "Sure, cool," and he opened the back doors then ducked inside. He came back out with one of those three-ring binders full of plastic sheets. The first binder wasn't anything special, mostly 1987 Topps which I had in a complete set box at home, though I was partial to its wood-grain borders. His second binder was more interesting. It had some '84 cards, including rookies of Mattingly and Henderson. He saw my eyes light up. "Would you like to buy some?"

"I don't have any money."

"Do you live near?"

I didn't, really. I was only a third of the way home. And I didn't think my mom would give me a few bucks to buy some cards off a random stranger out of a van. I shook my head. Almost immediately, I realized that I had told a stranger I was alone and broke and far from home. I excused myself. "I should get going."

He said, "Okay, maybe another time."

I biked away almost immediately, fast as I could with my sore legs. A minute or two later, he drove by, honked as he passed, and turned up a different street.

Looking back, he was probably not a full-on adult, but a 17- or 18-year-old from the neighborhood who was genuinely trying to sell some baseball cards for gas money or pot money or whatever teenagers needed in the late 1980s. And he was nice to me. I remember that, clearly. Very nice, treated me like I was cool, totally no sex predator vibe.

So here's the dilemma: When I was ten, I got in the back of a stranger's van and nothing bad happened.

The weird part is, I will obviously tell my kids not to talk to strangers, ever, or especially to get in their vans, no matter how many puppies are promised, or especially especially not to buy any baseball cards from them (because they could be O-Pee-Chee knock-offs or out of Post cereal boxes). However, I'll always know, as I'm saying this, that I got in the back of a stranger's van and nothing bad happened. The weird flip side of my youthful compulsive lying is a tendency, in my adulthood, toward complete and inappropriate full disclosure, and I'm worried that I won't be able to teach my kids this lesson without that weird caveat.

"If a stranger pulls over and invites you into his car, say no. You probably can't trust them. Unless it's broad daylight, and you aren't far from home. But even then, be wary. After you get a look at their cool shit."

Bad things don't always happen with strangers. Just usually. Of course, kids can't differentiate between "never" and "it's statistically unlikely that you will survive," so these shades of gray are paved over. But isn't that tantamount to lying? Don't we lie to kids all the time?

We like to them in history class. We lie to them about Santa Claus. We lie when we try to warn them away from activities that are certainly dangerous, but not 100% life-threatening. And eventually, they figure out all our lies and turn on us as hypocrites and spend their teenage years not believe a single warning we give, even though that's when shit starts to get real and they could heed a warning or two.

Would it be a radical and dangerous experiment to raise kids with caveats? Or, in the end, is it just safer to lay down blanket dictates and let them slowly realize later that the world is morally complex, sometimes in ways that are favorable? 

I don't know. Maybe this is a stupid and obviously wrong philosophical worry. Maybe the only reason I escaped that van with my virginity and allowance intact is that I had been hammered with blanket warnings. Maybe I'm just a lucky son of a bitch. And maybe I missed out on my one chance at a Ricky Henderson rookie card for 25 cents.