Having grown up in the practically prehistoric 40’s and 50’s, (For example, my family did not have a TV until I was in the third grade.) I have to shake my head in wonder at the scaredy cat world we have made. It seems a miracle to me that we still have young people willing to fight to protect us or serve as cops when everything in our society is directed to make sure that nobody ever has any risk.
This article brought the whole strageness back to me. Every other commercial on TV is for antibacterial something. How did we survive with out them. How did our parents and grandparents manage to raise children unprotected from those dangers?
Then take bicycle helmets. Nobody ever heard of a helmet for riding a bicycle when I was a kid and yet everybody had a bicycle. I never knew anybody that was injured other than skinned knees. Today, I think the state will take your kid away because you are obviously an unfit parent if you don’t make sure that they are wearing a helmet.
And what about all the state requirments for transporting your kids. It’s totally ridiculous. I still remember when our first son was born and he had to stay in the hospital after my wife was released. In those primitive days it was permissible to hold a baby in a car and of course we didn’t have those life-endangering air bags so the kid could be in the fron seat. (I don”t even know the complexity of what the state mandates for transporting a kid these days. I think it involves a child seat until they are 12 or so and no riding in the front but it may be worse than that). Anyway, my wife was sick and didn’t want to contaminate our son so she couldn’t go with me to get him but I couldn’t do it alone because the hospital wouldn’t release the baby to me unless there was someone to hold him. I had to get our neighbor to go with me. What amazed me at the time was that the hospital didn’t care one bit that I didn’t have a clue what to do with a newborn baby. I was practically in a panic about feeding him and changing diapers and who knows what else might go wrong but the hospital was fine with letting a total incompetent take a helpless baby. What they did care about was making sure that somebody was holding him in the car.
What in the world has happened to our country?
