Too Safe

That was the first thing I noticed, too.

America is absolutely bonkers about safety these days.  I am not an old man, but I can clearly remember a time when absolutely nobody wore seatbelts but race car drivers, and I had never even heard of a bicycle helmet.  These days, if you let your kid ride his tricycle without wearing a full set of pads, Child Protective Services will show up and take him away.  Everything has rounded edges, padding, and guard rails.  The outlets are plugged with little plastic safeties, there are electronic baby monitors with digital cameras accessible from the internet, the playground is lined with soft rubber, and even the shopping cart has a seatbelt.  There is little opportunity for Darwin to insert himself into the equation at all during the early years, the period of time he was once most effective—prior to sexual maturity. 

Evolutionarily speaking, it's probably already too late at this point.

Now any hope for natural selection has to wait until the teenage years, when the little boogers invent weird stunts to hurt themselves, like Parkour or skateboarding or whatever.  Watch the show Jackass a few times, and you will understand the backlash of too much safety for kids.  I think it is an example of nature trying to correct an imbalance, to weed out the unworthy before they pass those defective genes on to the next generation.  The Jackass guys are doing their best to help nature get rid of them.  Unfortunately it seldom works, as the little morons need to either die or get their testicles ripped off prior to getting anybody pregnant to have the appropriate effect on evolution.

It looks promising, but his girlfriend may already be knocked up.

In our weird little modern world, it’s the least favorable genes that seem to get passed down the most.  Watch the movie Idiocracy some time.  The premise is that the idiots are breeding like rabbits, while the intellectuals are hem-hawing around being proper and not reproducing.  This is then extrapolated over a thousand years until the intellectuals go extinct and everyone is stupid.  It’s kind of a slapstick comedy, but that’s a pretty powerful message.  Watch a few episodes of Jerry Springer and Jersey Shore and tell me it’s just my imagination.  I think this is a legitimate concern. 

On second thought, maybe you should just enjoy it.

I know what you are thinking.  You’re thinking, “Why don’t we just restrict reproduction by people who have inferior genetics?  We do it with horses and dogs, why not people?”  Another guy had some plans like that.  His first name was Adolf.

We could make a "super race."
I don't see any way that could possibly go wrong. 

Oh yeah, now I remember.

I am probably about to shoot a lot of holes in my own credibility with the following admission, but my journalistic integrity will not allow it to be omitted (and neither would my mama).  As a youngster, I managed to pull off a dizzying array of antics that still spark some lively conversations on the back porch at my parent’s house.  For instance, I set myself on fire with gasoline, completely filled my younger brother’s eye with mud, ran a three-wheeler into a car at 30mph, blew a hole in the living room ceiling with a shotgun, and stuck a wooden spear into my own forehead.  All of those are actual childhood events.  I have taken no poetic license here—and if you’d like all the details, my mother would be happy to tell you all about them.

I honestly wish I was making them up.

I did these, and many, many more amazingly fun activities which will remain unmentioned, since I have no desire to admit to any misdemeanors (or felonies) or to give Mama even more ammunition.  I did even more still as an adolescent and even as a young adult.  Were they stupid things?  Yes, they were.  Completely retarded.  But they taught me very valuable and realistic lessons that I carried with me into the future, sort of an attitude towards life and an actual appreciation for the consequences if you act like a retard around dangerous things.  The school of hard knocks, I’ve heard it called. 

He will remember this far longer than you yelling,
"Stop throwing darts at each other!"

I guess my point is that I have earned the right to reproduce because I navigated my way through a lifetime filled with opportunities to die or go to prison.  Because I was either smart or lucky enough to make it through, there’s a good chance my genes didn’t come from the shallow end of the pool. 

The ancient Spartans used to grossly underfeed their boys as they conducted their warrior training, forcing them to steal food to survive.  They were expected to steal the food, and it was left around for them to be able to steal it.  But if they were caught, they were beaten severely.  This made them resourceful, stealthy, and clever.

Do you think his mother ever left him
in the car while she was in the store?

Safety is a good thing, taken in moderation.  You don’t want to let your toddler play on high-rise scaffolding with a rusty razor blade and a book of matches.  But you do need to let him get into some trouble.  Life is risky, and living it is all about managing risk.  Let him earn his stripes.  He’ll be better in the long run.  Look how awesome I turned out.

Awesome safety sign.