"A Nation Of Wimps"

From the Sun-Sentinal:

Andrea Levin is grateful that Broward County schools care about her daughter's safety. But this year when they posted a sign that demanded "no running" on the playground, it seemed like overkill.[...]

How about swings or those hand-pulled merry-go-rounds?

"Nope. They've got moving parts. Moving parts on equipment is the number one cause of injury on the playgrounds."

Teeter-totters?

"Nope. That's moving too."

Sandboxes?

"Well, I have to be careful about animals" turning them into litter boxes.

Cement crawl tubes?

"Vagrants. The longer they are, the higher possibility that a vagrant could stay in them. We have shorter ones now that are made out of plastic or fiberglass."

And it goes on.
Now I don't know who's more to blame here - overprotective, litigious parents - or sue happy, greedy ambulance chasing lawyers. But this is getting - or rather, has gotten - ridiculous.

Back a hundred years or so ago, when I was a grade schooler, we had all that 'dangerous' equipment on our playground. Swing sets, teeter-totters, jungle gyms, giant strikes, merry-go-rounds, and - hold your breath now - running. GASP! NO! How could they!
Well, we had to run or we would have gotten thrown out at first, hit with the dodge ball, never made a "Flying Tackle", or never broken through playing "Red Rover".

We also had broken arms, legs and tailbones, stitches, concussions, bruises, bumps, fat lips, black eyes, tears, and so on.

And do you know what happened when our parents saw what had happened to us out on that unforgivable playground? They told us to be more careful, or we could get hurt worse or even killed. "And I'm not taking you to the hospital this time of day! I need to get supper ready!" The last thing on their mind was suing the school, with the second to last being getting rid of the equipment.

Kids need exercise and play. I think it's an important part of development, social interaction, teamwork, and the realization that not everyone is created equal, and some people have to try harder to do what may come easier to someone else. Which, if they don't learn at a ripe young age, will learn at a time in their lives when it may be a little harder to deal with.

Parents nowdays would rather have the kids sitting in their safe little homes, playing their safe little X-Boxes, eating their easy to prepare dehydrated, frozen, or fast food meals and bitch about how unhealthy and fat they are because the school system doesn't feed them right, rather than have their kids go outside where they can run, play, bruise, scar, and maybe breathe a little un-ionized air and soak up some life.

The more I read this sort of shit, the more I appreciate the underprotected childhood I had, and that I got to run and jump and play on the playground rather than walk out to a perfectly safe 'playground' just to sit or stand around and be bored.

Hell, I would rather stay in class.