Warning!

I was thinking recently about parental warnings. We are warned constantly on packaging, on TV and in our homes. We remember to eat our greens, not to talk to strangers, never to drink and drive, how to protect our beverages and our bodies and what things are safe an what aren't. What we are never warned about the things that often have the most impact on us-other people.
True there are some of us who have the kind of parents who vetted our friends but even the best friends in the world can be harmful. Even the great loves of our lives cruel and painful. We are a species with a very unique capacity for damaging others, often without even intending to do so.
I have never had trouble with a stranger, skipping my vegetables has never caused me serious harm and I have yet to develop ink poisoning from drawing on my skin. I have, however, been hurt, abandoned, let down, betrayed and even punished by people from whom I never expected it. No one ever warned me about them, no one ever warned them they would hurt me either. It is not something one prepares to do or prepares to react to- yet it is much more damaging and dangerous than almost anything that comes with a warning label. Even without the warning common sense tells us not to drink bleach or wash red sock with white shirts or to leave the stove on. Common sense does not protect us from the people we trust, we love, we look up to.
Maybe it's we that should come with a warning label.