Stay safe

I was forwarded an e-mail recently that talked about how, essentially, we were raising a generation of soft children who couldn’t handle growing up back in the day. It chided the use of such things as bike helmets, car seats and non-metal swingsets, and bragged about how we all grew up just fine.
Well, that’s all well and good, but not everyone got polio before the vaccine came along, but I think we can agree that we’re better off for having a vaccine.
I didn’t wear a bike helmet when I was a kid, and that was mainly because bike helmets were designed by water tower companies and rose about eight feet off your head, making you look like a giant two-wheeled mushroom.
But just because I didn’t crack my skull open isn’t a ringing endorsement for not wearing a helmet.
My kids are required to wear helmets when they ride their bikes or scooters. (They also have to wear chest armor when they joust.) My feeling is that just because I managed to survive doing some ill-advised or unprotected, there is no reason not to protect them where I can.
So basically it is a wonder that we made it through childhood, but that is hardly a reason to let my children grow up to beat the same odds, especially when safer alternatives are around.
Among the other ill-advised things from my youth:
1. The brick-and-board bike jump. Find a board, any board, and prop it up on a brick. Instant jump. This was dangerous for a couple of reasons: (1) If you got a board that was too thin, it might crack when you rode your bike over it, causing you to land well in front of your bike or (2) if you got a board that was too narrow and you still tried to jump it, your tire would slide off the board and you would end up as part of your bike in an incredibly uncomfortable union of flesh and metal.
2. Lawn darts. They are unavailable now (the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned them in 1998), and I have to say, that is a good idea. For those of you not familiar with them, they were giant darts to throw outside. They came with these plastic hoops, and you were supposed to put the hoops on the ground and see who could make the most inside the hoop. However, no one actually used the hoops, and kids opted to throw them at each other, which I think we can all agree is a bad idea.
3. Treehouses. Ten-year-olds have as much business constructing a tree house as they do constructing an actual house
4. Wiffle rocks. For the times when the crazy motion of a Wiffle ball wasn’t enough, we would put a small rock in it. The weight let it do extra crazy things when you threw it. Of course, on the off chance the batter hit it, the ball was coming zooming back at you, occasionally spitting a rock at you.
5. Crack the whip. When we would go roller skating, we would form a long line, with everyone holding hands. The first person in the line would start the crack by slinging his arm forward, sending the person next to him propelling forward, who would do the same thing with his arm. Eventually, it would get to the end, the last person would be snapped free, usually barreling into the end of the rink and doing a Pete Rose slide onto the carpet. True brainpower at work there.
6. Those fantastic metal swingsets. My kids have one of those wooden/plastic deals that you construct (in my case, over about three weeks). When I was young, we had the metal one that was rusted on the ends (the plastic caps had long since fallen off, so the sharp ends were just begging to give you tetanus). When you would start swinging, one of the legs would come off the ground, to the point where it became a game to see how high you could get the set off the ground. Topple it over? Bonus points!
So those are just a few examples of the things that, by all accounts, should have sent us to the emergency room. Just because they didn’t doesn’t mean I’m going to stand by watching my kids load up a Wiffle ball with rocks. Rather than look at this generation as weak or soft, I think I will just learn from my past and eradicate the obvious dangers where I can. I feel confident they can come up with their own hazards. Generation after generation has managed to develop new and exciting ways to endanger themselves, and I feel confident this batch of kids can continue the tradition.