Today’s a pretty slow news day. Osama Bin Laden’s still dead, no earthquakes or tsunamis and Michelle Bachman has yet to propose legislation to make it legal to hunt gay people. Being a ho-hum Friday, Kare 11 lobbed this softball to parents of the twin cities entitled “Four Conversations Every Parent Should Have With Their Children”. In the article, a youth pastor in Eden Prairie states that you should sit your child down and tell them –

1. Choices Have Consequences: True. If you don’t let your child know this, they will certainly grow up to be a crazed sociopath with no concept of cause and effect.

2. Sex Was Created To Be Wonderful and Enjoyed: Again, true. We don’t want our children growing up to think sex is a laborious task only used for procreation. If you don’t tell your kids sex is fun, who will? The media? Unlikely.

3. I am not perfect: This one is very important in case your child invites his friends over and then stabs you with a steak knife to prove to them that you’re invulnerable or have a mutant healing factor. My stepson had to learn the hard way that bullets don’t bounce off me by shooting me in the leg. On the way to the hospital we had a heart-to-heart about how I’m only human before I passed out from blood loss.

4. You Are Uniquely and Wonderfully Made: While it may be fun to tell your child that they were purchased at Wal-Mart on clearance or that everybody’s special except them, turns out it will hurt their “self esteem” in the long run.

While I applaud the pastor for trying to strengthen relationships between parents and children, I think that such conversation tips should come from somebody like me who still thinks like a child (plays video games, reads comics, still a virgin). So here are Four Conversations You Should Actually Have With Your Children.

1. Zombies Are Coming. Be Prepared: This means not only educating your child by watching everything George Romero’s ever made (even Land of the Dead) and reading books like The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z and The Five Zombies You Decapitate in Heaven (that last one might have just been a dream I had). It also means making sure that your child understands if you go zombie, they have to take you out. It’s important to know that you are their parent and will always love them unless you turn into a zombie.

2. Some Drugs Are Worse Than Others: Growing up I was always told that drugs are bad. Never was I told that smoking crack was way worse than smoking weed. One time in high school a kid asked me if I wanted to smoke a bunch of PCP in the boys’ room. It took four tranquilizer darts and a taser to get me off the flagpole that day. Had I just smoked a joint, I would’ve just been suspended and grounded for a month.

3. Playing “Magic: The Gathering” is a Good Way to Stay a Virgin Until You’re 20: Same goes for D&D, Pokemon or any card game that doesn’t involve regular playing cards. I’m currently working on a time machine to go and tell my younger self this one.

4. Seriously. I Want You to Shoot Me If I Become a Zombie: I cannot stress this enough. Nobody wants their children to be the sad cliche shaking so hard they can’t hold the gun straight and blubbering through tears “Don’t you recognize me, dad? It’s me! I love you!”. Over 30% of zombie infections are passed from parent to child during futile rationalization attempts (source: The Five Zombies You Decapitate in Heaven). Don’t be another statistic.