The town of Wayne is getting on the Internet, and when you get on the Internet, the first thing you've got to do is censor it. Right now, a library committee in Wayne is discussing whether and how to limit Internet access for minors at the Preakness library and the new branch on Valley Road, possibly by installing filtering software in special computers set aside for children, or possibly by commencing to break people's fingers. There are just some things you don't want small children to see, such as what really happens in a slaughter house, or how sit coms get developed.

But most of all when we talk about censoring, the main thing we're talking about is sex. Guardian software tends to focus on sex because, from what I've been told, pornography objectifies people. Fortunately, nothing else does. Perfume ads, Backstreet Boys videos, pretty much anything involving Fabio -- all these things represent life in its full complexity.

But if we're really going to guard children, there are a few other things we need to keep out of baby-blue and powder-pink computers:

^ Car Ads: Someday, all children must question their native values and go seek some unnamable, ineffable new lives of their own. Advertisers happen to have an answer for this: Buy a Saab. Just about every car ad out there -- on the web, on TV -- equates a new car with a new life. And that's wrong. When it's time to make your own life, the correct thing to do is write whiny self-righteous poetry, which your parents will delight in quoting back to you someday when you try having them declared incompetent.

^ Educational Stuff: Educational web pages mislead children into believing that life is an amusing romp populated by fuzzy, googly-eyed creatures who pop out of trash cans every so often to teach us how to pronounce things in Spanish. (``Tengo mucho hambre. . . I am very hungry. . . Ah! Pepsi Lite! Ahora con Nutri-Sweet!'') We need a realistic children's feature called ``Kidz Death of a Salesman,'' the weekly story of little Willie Loman who, together with his dog Patches and his best friend Spanky the Littlest Fireman, repeatedly learns that his life has been a misguided travesty.

^ Nickelodeon's Web Page: One way the popular culture of my youth damaged me the most egregiously is by cramming my head full of TV theme songs and pointless product trivia. (You know, when I was a kid, Lucky Charms had only pink hearts, yellow moons and green clovers -- and we were glad to have them!) Now not only do kids have even more of this crap from even more TV channels, but they can go online and retrieve anything they've missed. That would be the same as if my apartment were stocked with old videos of F-Troop, and I watched them ceaselessly day in and day out every day until it was time to go to work. Which I do. But suppose I didn't.

^ Personal Web Pages Belonging To Other Children: Am I the only one who read ``Lord of the Flies?'' The person most likely to hurt and degrade a child is and has always been another child. I've read studies, I've done research, but mostly I've carried around my junior high school yearbook for the last 25 years, sometimes taking it out in a bus and yelling at it.

^ Hotjobs.com: Suppose you're a bright-eyed lad who gets to wondering what sort of job you'll land someday with a BA in art history and maybe an internship at your local public radio station. What do you find? ``Junior collections representative, telemarketing representative, customer service rep with a great ATTITUDE!'' If you let kids see that kind of thing, they'll positively leap at the chance to get hooked on crack.

Of course, none of this is my problem. Wayne's libraries wouldn't have any filtering software for adults, so I could still download smut. That's crucial. The library is where most people like look at pornography, since our perversions are usually something we're really proud of. (``Pardon me, but does this library have a comprehensive index of women who look vaguely like Betty White? You could really save me all kinds of time here.'')

But if you want to protect children, you can't just filter out sex. You've got to filter out the future.