a rant

It all started over a lovely sandwich with my dear friend Lauren at Bruegger's today for lunch. The sunshine was beating down outside at a steady 77 degrees, the birds were chirping, I took the cardigan off of my now peeling shoulders from vacation (yeah yeah you told me so, whatever) and our pleasant little lunch ended with an in depth conversation about funny dead animal stories and eventually, how children these days are going to grow up to be the P word.

Lauren began to explain to me how, when she was little her brother, some neighborhood boys and her would patrol the nearest creek pretending to be park rangers and one day she picked up a dead possum with her bare hands. "And look at you! You're still alive! You didn't get rabies and you didn't die." SHOCKER.

I am not going to apologize in advance for having this point of view because I am fairly certain that even when I become a mother I will stand firm on this valid and entirely true point about this generation of children who will someday be running the world and will all turn out to be GIANT WUSSIES.

But since WHEN is it okay to be extremely sheltered and obsessive over feeding your children ONLY organic food, not letting them play in mud or eat dirt, not letting them run wild and free in the parks and chase after animals? What REALLY gets me worked up is this whole ideal of removing high dives from pools. This my friends, is my crutch to my whole idea that the children of today are going to be the p-words of tomorrow.

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How else were Caitlin and I supposed to overcome our fears of climbing a ridiculously high ladder to count to three only to throw our little bodies off of a high dive only to realize it was the most liberating feeling we had felt in our lives up to that point? How else were we supposed to understand that if you don't jump now you'll never try. There is no coming back DOWN the ladder. The ladder serves as a purpose to go UP. I am sure you can get at the invaluable lessons I am portraying here.

A belly smack or two stings for what, maybe 3 minutes until you realize it doesn't even hurt anymore because you're already climbing back to the top. I am embarassed that children today aren't going to have the opportunities to learn the hard way...a scrape, a bruise, a freaking red sting the size of a watermelon covering your belly is not going to cause your child to be obese, an alcoholic, a sexual predator, a serial murderer or even a high school or college dropout. It's going to give him the balls and her the guts to jump once in awhile, accept the consequences and get right back up to the top and jump again.

Let the kids fall/run/skip/slip off the high dive. Get some freaking belly smacks in. Let them shoot at squirrels with a BB gun and go pick up a possum in the creek for God's sake. Unfortunately I can never be That Awesome and Ridiculously Cool Adult jumping off the high dive at rest period at the Worthington Pool I so eagerly watched and waited for every break from swimming we had...which my friends, is a damn shame. Thanks Worthington Pool for creating more wussies of tomorrow.

Aaaannnnd I'm done. That felt good.