Playing It (too) Safe?

--- by Micheal

Is our culture going to hell in a hand basket -- a nice safe hand basket? I got to wondering that. Is America deteriorating due to an overactive sense of safety? We see a symptom of this "disease" as the common foundation of litigation over someone getting hurt. Whatever it was that caused their injury, it's someone else's fault, never the person. You put scalding hot liquid between your legs and get scaled, it's the restaurant's fault. You drive like an moron and flip over your SUV, it's Suzuki's fault. Whatever environment we find ourselves in, the prevailing presumption is that it will be 100% totally safe. If it isn't, someone else's must pay! Big time.

This came back to my attention recently when working on a new playground design for a zoo. There are tons of rules, standards and regulations governing what a "proper" playground must be. Tire swings must be far enough away from their support poles that a kid can't bang himself into one. There must be bumpers beneath teeter totters to cushion the landing and prevent a leg from getting trapped under there. There must be protective surfacing in front and back of a swing twice however high it is.

What sent me into a curmudgeonly rant was seeing the chart for what qualified as "protective surfacing". Grass does not qualify. For a swing, it needs to be 9 inches of shredded rubber or wood chips, etc. to protect the child from a fall from 10 feet up. What? I shouted to myself. What is a kid doing falling from 10 feet up? If he's up on top of the swing set horsing around and falls, why is this the playground owner's fault?

I know, I know, every curmudgeon out there usually begins his rant with, "When I was a kid..." But I'm going to do it anyway. When I was a kid in grade school, there was nothing beneath the teeter-totter but hard packed soil. There was nothing beneath the swings but more hard soil and the stray tuft or two of grass which we hadn't yet trampled to death. Beneath the monkey bars was more hard soil with maybe a skiff of sand. That was just how it was. We could all see it. We knew the risks.

If I jumped out of my swing, I landed on hard dirt. I could skin up my hands if I landed badly. I knew that going in. If a kid was goofing around on the monkey bars -- "Hey lookie what I can do!" -- and fell, he got the wind knocked out of him. I'd seen that plenty of times. What all that did was teach me some respect for the physical world. I learned some important lessons on that playground. (1) The ground is hard. (2) If you do stupid stuff, you can get hurt.

What do kids nowadays learn? (1) Falling should never hurt. (2) Nothing they do is stupid.

If they do get hurt, it's someone else's fault. Mommy will sue the school system or McDonalds or whoever was fool enough to let them in. I'm certainly not suggesting that playgrounds be made of broken glass and jagged rusty steel. It should not hurt to swing or climb the monkey bars. I also feel badly when a child gets hurt, but kids get hurt. Is it ALWAYS someone else's fault?

We're training our new generation to be habitual victims. They won't fail to get hurt at some point. The "world" they are growing up in is designed to protect them from a 10 foot fall. It makes 10 foot falls expected. Trouble is, the rest of the world -- the REAL world -- is not covered with protective surfacing. It's hard.

Isn't this what we're seeing now in the financial markets? Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, they were all goofing around at the top of the financial monkey bars and fell off. Instead of having the wind knocked out of them, like it would anybody else, they're bellyaching that their falls shouldn't hurt. Someone should be providing "protective surfacing" for them.

Our culture is going to hell in a hand basket -- a nice soft, round-cornered hand basket.