My sons' favorite part of school is recess (no surprises there), but last week when I picked them up, they were deflated. Northern Lights ABC Elementary School outlawed WALL BALL. The world's fastest growing playground game, Wall Ball is a cross between handball, dodge ball and volleyball, but was banned after a rash of Wall Ball injuries. The noon-duties shut it down, collected the balls and the principle made an announcement over the P.A.:
“In the name of safety henceforth and hereafter, any child caught playing Wall Ball will be summarily expelled.”
During the eight years my children have attended this fine school, I've watched one thing after another on the playground become "off limits": the group of twelve trees constituting of "the woods" (evidently trees are a silent killer), the open field if there is a trace of mud (in Alaska, a weekly occurrence), the hill if there's any ice (ditto previous comment), the fence around the perimeter (because fences shouldn't be touched on general principle) and if there's even a trace of rain the whole thing is gone--it's indoor recess.
The situation is symptomatic of a larger issue which seems to continuously counteract my efforts as a parent: Regulation of the most basic aspects of everyday life in the name of protection, a societal attempt to sterilize humanity from the perils of existence. Life is a dangerous game, full of choices, costs, gambles and consequences, but in an attempt to improve our surroundings and eliminate unnecessary risks we are sanitizing childhood into oblivion.
Think about when you were young and learning to ride a bike. Did you know anyone who wore a helmet? The only kid I knew who wore a helmet was the boy next door who had a rare medical condition that had softened his bones. Other than that, I never saw anyone with a helmet, never saw one for sale in a store, and never would have thought of wearing one.
Moreover, I never knew a child to suffer a head injury while riding their bike. All the kids I played with in our neighborhood, all the hours I spent on my bike and there wasn't one head injury. As an adult, I still have yet to see or hear of anyone who's suffered even a minor head injury while riding a bike, let alone a life-threatening fracture.
I know they exist out there—somewhere—I've read articles in the paper where emergency room doctors are quoted saying bike helmets have saved many lives. I'm sure there are even some people reading this article who could tell gruesome tales…but my point is:
They are the rare exception.
But, when the Municipality of Anchorage passed an ordinance mandating bike helmets what was lost? Free choice? Accountability for one's actions? Learning cause and effect? How about the feeling of the wind in your hair? And the irony is that with the loss of these crucial life experiences, the helmets still haven't eliminated the danger. There will still be bicycle fatalities.
But before you think this is all about bike helmets, let me expand a bit. My parents were children of the sixties lived through threats of nuclear holocaust, the Watts riots, riots at the Democratic National Convention, riots at Kent State, heck, riots everywhere, the fear dying in a controversial war, conflicts over civil rights, assassinations—JFK, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy—corruption in government and the resignation of Nixon.
But, they made it through and are well on their way to collecting social security checks.
Now, go back even further when my grandparents married in 1943, days before he shipped off to serve as a medic in World War II. They had lived through the Depression and knew what real poverty looked like, they lived through the trauma of Pearl Harbor, the possible world domination by the Third Reich, the death of friends and loved ones, and biological epidemics such as polio, influenza and countless other diseases. But even amid the turmoil someone was saying, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
