"My bologna has a first name. It's O-S-C-A-R. My bologna has a second name. It's M-A-Y-E-R ..."

You know how it goes. I can almost guarantee you'll have that song rattling around in your head the rest of the day. That TV commercial, with the cute, curly-haired kid, fishing pole in one hand and a sandwich in the other, debuted in 1973. For 38 years, that song has occupied brain space in my head.

Thankfully, back then, I could only get three network TV stations and one local, independent UHF station, if the rabbit ears were adjusted just right, to load my cranium with media messages. Away from TV, sometimes I'd listen to my parents' favorite AM radio station, too.

And one Christmas, we got Pong.

Kids today make more media decisions before breakfast than I made in a year. Which of hundreds of TV channels should they watch? Which websites should they visit? Which videos should they stream? What music should they download? Which version of Angry Birds should they play?

The scary thing, as a parent, is the bologna — not the actual meat, though that might be scary, too. It's the fact that a 30-second TV commercial I heard four decades ago is stuck in my head.

What sounds, what images, what messages, I wonder, might my kids hear or see today that will stick in their heads? Will it be that commercial for the giant cupcake cake pan? Or perhaps HeadOn, a headache miracle stick applied to the forehead? Will it be a lyrical bad word from one of my old Foo Fighters' albums they find in the basement? Or maybe a video game image of a gruesome dismemberment?

Will the memory be happy or haunting?

We carefully shop for groceries, plan meals and dole out rations of junk food for our kids, but the media feeds their minds as importantly as we feed their bodies. I wouldn't dream of letting any of my four kids wipe out a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby and a familysize bag of Twizzlers, but I've wandered the house doing laundry and fix-it projects for hours while I let them club each other as characters in Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

Studies record a whopping four to 12 hours a day with media — TV, music, games, Internet, magazines, books, etc. I'm not home and awake for 12 hours most days. Often, my kids spend more time with media than with me.

Said in an annoying combination of sigh and whine, "I'm bored ..." sounds worse than the 13-year cicadas did. My usual response is a lecture about how I'm not a cruise director and how they'll miss being bored in a few short summers.

But maybe I ought to stop telling them what to do and actually show them. Maybe I ought to quit my own game of Doodle Jump and put down my iPad. Maybe, just maybe, I ought to get out and show them there's a whole wide world to play in and that good media choices offer a window on part of it. The rest of it is right outside their very own window, waiting to be explored.

Maybe I'll start by sitting down with my kids and talking. Really talking and listening. And maybe I'll do it over a bologna sandwich, because "Oscar Mayer has a way with b-o-l-o-g-n-a."

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Dave Bundy is publisher and executive editor of the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. He can be reached at dbundy@yourjournal.com or (314) 744-5772.