Since America’s most recent glory years (post- WWII), our culture has become more about safety than fun, more about feelings than facts and is now solidly centered around child worship.
To put it plainly, we are proving Darwin’s theory of evolution was just that; because in large part, we are devolving.
We are becoming the dumbest, fattest, laziest and most feminized, paranoid and smothering of all societies on the planet.
If that offends you, good, because you're the type who must not have any idea why your 12 year- old weighs 300 pounds, since the diet cola surely cancels out the half pound burger he wolfs down four nights a week.
You must be the single parent with social entries in every date of your calendar who can’t understand why your child can’t read.
But I've got my own kids to worry about. You’re sharing their air.
And what you’ve got is contagious.
There’s a doctor somewhere that can prove it.
At some point since our own teachers taught us about survival of the fittest and natural selection, and After School Specials taught us about life not being fair and losing gracefully, our generation picked up a over- exaggerated sense of entitlement, with children treated like royalty from no reason other than being born.
When I was a young child, it was widely understood that every kid should have the same chance to make it on the team, but not every kid should be considered good enough to play. Every kid should be given the same number of chances to catch the ball, the same quality cleats, and the same chance to run the field- all with the same encouragement from the coach.
But if your kid can’t throw the ball or run that field, he ain’t gonna play. Not everyone is good enough to make the team- that’s why they have tryouts.
Not every child is special. Not every kid deserves desert, not every kid deserves to watch television.
These aren’t rights; they are privileges.
Teachers, lawmakers, and subsequently parents, have taken all cause and effect out of the lives of children and treats each one as someone deserving of recognition, whether they catch that ball or not.
We live in a giant jungle of twisted metal and exhaust surrounded by wild animals and hurricanes, and the law of that jungle has for million of years been survival of the fittest. Unfortunately, our overly- thin skinned society has dropped our edge on the food chain.
Here’s how it should be:
Cause: Little Johnny is great at punting a football.
Effect: Little Johnny will probably start as the team’s kicker, giving him the confidence he needs to do anything; getting that college scholarship, fixing Mrs. Olsen’s banister next door, and teaching his own son the rewards of hard work.
Here’s how it is:
Cause: Little Johnny is great at punting a football.
Effect: It doesn’t matter how good Johnny is because everyone is special just for showing up. The team doesn’t have a regular starting kicker because it’s not fair to any of the other kickers on the team. Little Johnny will realize there’s no point to trying hard at anything, and since he has no healthy outlet for his biological prowess, he’ll become addicted to crack and beat his women.
We can’t really blame the kids for this whole mess; like Mr. Miyagi said, “tee-cha say, stoo- dunt do”.
We, the adults- the teachers- are screwing up all of humanity by regulating their playtime, and by studying, labeling and restructuring what should be spontaneous fun, all in the belief we’re making their lives better.
Think about a typical playground in 1980- it consisted of tall and winding slides and see- saws; all made of metal that cooked in the sun before we got outside for recess. We had merry- go- rounds requiring ridiculous amounts of energy before they’d spin for even five seconds. We had creaking wood jungle gyms with splinters jutting out of every angle and swinging bridges connected with real metal eye hooks and thick bolts.
All such mechanisms designed to instill and excite in children the basic concepts behind vigorous movement, territorial boundaries, sharing, physics and urban combat.
Today’s playgrounds are completely foreign to anyone born before 1985; all devoid of anything that could possibly hold the interest of any child over the age of four. They are brightly- colored masses of rubber- coated plastic that couldn’t bruise a banana.
The monkey bars barely rise three feet from the ground.
Kids descend from a whooping 15 degree angle on ridiculously- wide plastic slides into matted- down mulch arranged over rubber matting.
Jungle gym wood has been replaced with plastic painted to look like wood, and the swinging bridges don’t really swing anymore.
The only things left from yesterday are the swing sets.
No child today knows the joy of being stuck in a human traffic jam in the middle of a twist- slide, being jabbed in the kidney with someone’s shoe or getting bashed in the eye with a strange elbow.
Bouncing back from a gushing eye wound or wearing a cast for six weeks from playtime injuries told the world everything they needed to know about us: I can handle it.
Today’s playgrounds teach our kids they can’t be trusted to control themselves, they aren’t capable of maneuvering obstacles and are too fragile to suffer even the most mundane injury. It’s why they can’t relate to their parents- or appreciate the sense of order in the larger world around them.
And whose fault is that?
The Department of Education has joined forces with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and together they’ve created a whole slew of programs, pamphlets and booklets produced to inform us how at risk our kids are when they play.
Because how the hell would we know? We’re just the parents.
One such publication is titled The Public Playground Safety Book, and it’s a hard book to read. I had to slam a few boilermakers, and then nap awhile before choking it all down.
This book is proof that too many fields of study gain credibility too easily in the belief that their furtherance make us better people.
Somewhere along the line, a group of bored, middle- aged, safety fanatics decided our children were too helpless to traverse the complicated inner workings of “heavy metal swings”, “multiple occupancy swings” or “rope swings”.
This booklet advises against these types of swings on public playgrounds, claiming they pose risks of “potential strangulation hazard” and “impact injury”.
Impact injury??
I always thought that’s what childhood was; a series of impact injuries. Whoever survived got to move out and play their music as loud as they want and drink and smoke and walk around their house naked.
And if you were a kid who was strangled by one of these swings, then you ought never move out of your parents' home.
The book also instructs schools to remove all "trapeze bars" from playgrounds. I remember having a helluva lot of fun on things, and there’s nothing quite learning how to hang upside down. It keeps you limber, keeps your defense up and gives you an idea of how to look at the status quo from a different perspective.
But no longer are these lauded as attributes. The booklet claims trapeze bars are “athletic equipment and not recommended for public playground use.”
That’s a direct quote from the book.
I couldn’t make that up.
Seeing as how athletic equipment has no place on the playground, then it would follow that neither does athletic ability. Schools in Wyoming, Arizona, Washington and at least three other states have sent the message loud and clear: “Sorry kids, but we have no faith in your resilience, strength or ability.”
Translation: No tag, no dodge ball, and in some cases, no physical contact whatsoever.
One school in Connecticut instituted a “hands- off” policy in early 2009. The school’s over- reactionary principal banned all physical contact including high- fives and hugging, all stemming from a playground incident that left one kid with a groin injury.
Spontaneous play at recess is essential to a kid’s emotional and physical development; you either win or lose based on your ability to think quickly and react immediately. You learn basic means of self- defense and deductive reasoning in a feral environment.
All key mental and physical elements that must be mastered before adolescent milestones can be met.
Everything from getting laid in a bucket seat, manipulating a stick shift or maneuvering obstacles and crowds at an airport or rock concert could never be achieved without conquering these.
I knew a girl who broke her wrist during recess tag in the 4th grade; as she was taken to the hospital, the playground teacher gave us not a lecture, but a warning; she laid the responsibility where it all belonged- right in our laps.
“I pity the poor boy that ran into her, because she will find out who you are.”
The message was prophetic.
She did find the guy; she smacked him across the face with her cast. He had a terrific gash in his lip for weeks, but guess what? He never ran into another girl at recess.
But it didn’t go to a committee. It wasn’t made part of a study. No new safety rules were implemented. We, the guilty, learned firsthand about consequences. We weren’t paying attention- somebody got hurt. We were expected to act accordingly from then out.
But we all survived, and it had nothing to do with a video, booklet or safety pamphlet.
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