it was a different world back then; safety hadn’t been invented yet. Her daddy’s about to tell her to put the gun down and run down to the shops to get some laudanum for momma and a couple of ceegars for da. It’s a thousand wonders the human race survived through those barbarous times, no?
Nowadays, of course, the little girl could tell teacher that daddy made her hold the gun, and festivities would ensue…
I’m always amused in old Westerns when the kid hops down to the general store to buy Grand’dad a jug of sour mash and a plug of chaw. And of course anybody could buy Laudanum or even Heroin.
My Dad bought a shotgun mail-order through the Sears catalog with the money he made potato picking (he dropped cash and an order-form in an envelope…and actually got the WRONG shotgun, but he kept that one because Sears had made an error in his favor).
I mean I’m certainly glad I had a polio and measles vaccine, and I’m very pleased with how well my wife’s brain surgery went…but I wonder overall how much safer we are in the bubble-wrapped world?
No, we’re not. And quality of life has suffered.
I think it is a mixed bag; there are definitely good things about the safety focus – cars, many consumer products, etc
but there are essential elements that are missing – adventure, learning through failure, creativity.
We used to walk around the neighborhoods with pellet and b.b. guns on our shoulders — tracking the dangerous yeti or evil yellow belly sap sucker. Or simply finding a place to get in some target practice. Now days, the adventure would be explaining to the S.W.A.T. team why a child had a b.b. gun.
We used to play outside at night until the porch light came on — slapping at mosquitoes or slathering on repellent — talking about traveling to the stars.
We used to shoot off fire crackers and bottle rockets on the Fourth of July, learning to be safe by making small mistakes. Now shows are canceled if the wind gets over 2.1195 miles per hour.
Now we have video games that leave nothing to the imagination, 500 cable channels to fill in for those with no imagination and zero tolerance policies that leave kids unwilling to make a mistake that they can learn from.
I’ll take gamma knives and radiation therapies but I also want the freedom to take my kids out into the woods hunting, give them a knife to whittle with, and let them roam the neighborhoods in search of the chupacabras or mountain lions.
I’ll take “Now you be home before dark, with a mess of fish if you can…” any day. I’ll take the advancements, too – but can we just leave off the nanny state parts?
Yeah, I’ll take that Scott. Sounds like a great deal to me!
I read “Nanny state parks” and thought “L-A-A-A-A-A-AME.”