Safety First

You can't be too careful these days. Modern parents are constantly drilling safety into their kids' heads. We expect them to be in car seats until they are almost old enough to start dating. We strap them into shopping carts only after we wipe them down with disinfectant wipes. We line playgrounds with rubber splat mats so the kids just bounce right back up when they fall. Schools even run drills so the kids will know how to respond when someone comes on campus with a gun. In many ways safety is a great thing, but it can have its drawbacks. 

The risk of too much safety inevitably leads one to believe that we can prevent every disaster, tragedy, or consequence from happening and when something does go wrong, the person who should have prevented is blamed. As a matter of fact, six scientists in Italy were recently convicted of charges that they failed to accurately predict an earthquake that resulted in 309 deaths. 

Given the emphasis that is placed on safety these days, I shouldn't have been surprised to see safety equipment appear at the dinner table last night. My two oldest girls have been taking horseback riding lessons and the headgear of choice is no longer the traditional cowboy hat. The loaner helmets that they were given were ill-fitting and not so stylish, but Mommy had a solution. Since no price is too great when it comes to protecting your kids' noggins, she did what any parent would do and logged into her Amazon Prime account, surfed around a bit, added a few helmets that made fashion statements and had good reviews to her shopping cart, and checked out. 

Two days later the new helmets were on our front porch. That also happened to be the same day she went to Costco for her weekly excursion. With summer knocking on our door, she couldn't help but notice all the swimming accessories that the giant warehouse had on display. As a result, she came home with a hybrid life jacket/floatie contraption for our two-year-old. It looks a little silly, but when you're two, silly is the new suave, so she loved it. 

And that brings us to last night's dinner. As we ate, the older girls had their stylishly new helmets securely strapped to their heads, Ellie had her life jacket/floatie contraption, and Justin had found a pair of floaties in the garage to wear. Eighty percent of our kids were the safest kids in town at that moment. The last 20% was holding out for something. "Hey, Zach," I said. "You aren't wearing any safety equipment."

I guess when you turn eleven, you aren't as easily entertained as younger kids. "I'm okay," he said. 

"Do you want me to go get you a bullet proof vest or something?" He wasn't interested and reassured me that he would be able to safely finish his meal without the use of any extra padding or restraint systems. That's good, because keeping kids safe can get expensive. "Okay," I said," just don't fall out of your chair."