Where was the bit about America?
Oh my god. Are you fucking joking? It’s EXACTLY this type of bullshit thinking that’s responsible for the pussification.
Yeah, my selective memory must have blocked out all those gradeschool kids we lost to brain damage and death from riding helmetless, as well as the ones who died in fires because they didn’t know “stop drop and roll”, and all the ones who locked themselves in abandoned refrigerators, and all the ones who touched electric power lines, and all the ones who got into the van with the stranger with the candy. They all went to heaven with the kid who died from eating pop rocks and coca-cola and I graduated 4th grade alone.
No, back in my day none of us wore helmets any time we ever rode our bikes. And by “rode our bikes” I mean “built ramps to jump off”, “stood on the seat with no hands”, and “tried to get as many kids we could get onto one bike”.
My selective memory also seems to leave me with the image of my brother going over than handlebars, landing on his head and getting stitches, as well as how I got that scar on my forehead, the stitches in my chin, and how my sister cut her head open doing gymnastics near the piano. It’s called being a kid.
That thing you are holding while pissing is euphemistically called “el chile” in Mexico!!!
Well, fuck. There still doesn’t seem to be hard evidence that he did give money to Hamas, but in light of those quotes it actually seems possible.
Fuck. Well I’m still gonna call my cat Moonshadow goddammit.
Spanking vs Time out.
One parent disciplines with spanking, the other with a “look of intimidation”. Phsyical vs psychological.
Spanking has an immediate physical result, psychological intimidation leaves the child not knowing why he feels like fucking shit. Raise your kids however you want, just stay the fuck away from mine.
Rune
I read your post about Yusef Islam. Not anyone I’d ever like to meet, but look out for him as a candidate for president in 2008. He has all the qualifications.
Cat Stevens used to be a pussy until he changed his name.
I’m totally with Trunk on this. You’ll are way too pussified.
I’ve never known anyone who wore a helmet or pads while riding a cycle (well, there was one guy, but he was just showing off). I remember plenty of incidents where my brother, my friends and me have fallen off our tricycles and cycles, with bruises, grazed skin and plenty of tears and we’ve all survived. My brother received stitches on his lower jaw from a corny cycling stunt that went wrong, and given a chance he’d probably still go ahead and try that stunt again.
Little kids don’t fall so hard, and more often than not, they just get up and continue doing whatever it was they were doing. To have tricyclists wearing helmets on the premise that something disastrous might happen is over-reacting. By all mean, have your wheelie-doing, stunt-crazy kid wear a helmet and pads. Not your 3yo on a tricycle.
:smack: Hit preview!
Dammit! Please ignore those last two sentences… they don’t accurately convey my thoughts on this topic.
What I wanted to say was that if your kid is into extreme cycle sports (like going downhill crosscountry real fast), have him wear a helmet and pads. Not your kid who’s just having some fun in the park, or your 3yo who’s learning to ride a cycle.
He’s still very much a pussy. Stupid sumbitch still can’t figure out where the children play.
Trunk: *Yeah, my selective memory must have blocked out all those gradeschool kids we lost to brain damage and death from riding helmetless, as well as the ones who died in fires because they didn’t know “stop drop and roll”, and all the ones who locked themselves in abandoned refrigerators, and all the ones who touched electric power lines, and all the ones who got into the van with the stranger with the candy. *
Wait a sec. You’re opposed not just to kids using protective gear, but to kids being taught basic safety rules like “stop drop and roll” and not playing with live wires? Why?
I don’t understand why anybody feels the need to beat their chests about “pussification” when it comes to simple safety precautions. I agree that alarmists shouldn’t be inaccurately exaggerating the risks of ordinary activities, and that people should have a reasonable latitude in making their own choices, for themselves and their kids, about what safety precautions are necessary.
But come on, folks, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater (a dangerous childrearing practice if ever I heard of one!). Just because some people are too obsessive and overprotective about safety precautions doesn’t mean the precautions themselves are bad or “pussifying”.
People who get all hysterical about how putting a bike helmet on your 3-year-old will turn him into a “pussy” deprived of a healthy red-blooded American childhood are being even sillier than people who get hysterical about how not putting a helmet on him will inevitably result in his poor little brains getting plastered all over the sidewalk.
Grow some sense, folks. There are certain risks involved in many ordinary activities, particularly for children, who tend to be inexperienced and unwise. There are certain safety measures that reduce those risks. There is a very wide gray area of individual judgement about acceptable risk levels that falls between the extremes of Stiflingly Paranoid and Suicidally Reckless. We don’t need to assume that everyone whose individual judgement differs from our own is therefore either a coward or a fool.
More inanity from the “let your child suffer a head injury - it’s good for them” set. :rolleyes:
My two year old on her tricycle had a severe fall off her bike, one in which when her head hit, the neighbor 100 yards away heard the blow.
She was wearing her helmet, something for which I’m fully grateful.
Scraped knees, bad cuts, broken bones… those are one thing. Head injuries are something else.
And you’re talking to a guy who once jumped sixteen upright lawn-sized trash cans (twelve of them successfully!) on his Huffy, sans protection of any kind.
That’s why they call them accidents. You put on the helmet because something might happen.
Yeah we do. This is the Pit, you know. 
Right. Show me where I said it was good for them. It’s got nothing to do with good or bad. It’s just childhood and growing up.
We can trade stories from both sides of the fence till it starts snowing in Bombay (which is never does, fyi). Doesn’t change the fact that most kids around the world continue to ride their tricycles and cycles without helmets, and they turn out just fine. Like Kimstu says, with a few basic precautions (like maybe have them ride their tricycles only on grass), you can let your kids have their falls and tumbles without worrying about ‘head injuries’.
And you’re talking to a guy who went about 1 mile down a mountain road without once touching the handlebar (and therefore, the brakes too), without any protection. So we’re both a bit crazy. So what?
Uh, back to Cat Stevens… I dunno about Yusuf Islam, but man, I really like Peace Train. And Moonshadow. And Wild World. And, um, what’s the other one? Oh, Father and Son.
Since he’s now apparently an extremist prick, am I justified in downloading those?
But gynecology is a profession that requires a nation of pussies!
Just to be fair, let me note that it was your first post was nothing but “story”:
Regardless, the point remains:
- Allowing your child to not wear a helmet implies that you are certain that nothing will go wrong.
- Accidents, by definition, are violations of certainty.
- Children are accidents waiting to happen.
You’re quite right: just because something might go wrong doesn’t mean it will. However, in rebuttal, you then use the same sort of logic, only reversed: If something probably won’t go wrong, then it won’t.
You are willing to risk head injury on the basis that it probably won’t happen. I’m not willing to risk it because it might.
True, I did provide the first story :smack:
I think you’re overstretching a bit. I’m not arguing that because something probaly won’t go wrong, then it won’t. We’re disagreeing on the extent to which the safety of the child needs to be provided for.
I hope this thread is not too old. Here’s my example.
A few years ago in my sons’ room I had a thing called a Dirty Dunk. Essentially a basketball hoop with a laundry bag attached that hung on the door. It was great because it was a challenge–the threw their dirty clothes at it instead of dropping them on the floor. Now I have a third son who’s in need of this kind of discipline but the old Dirty Dunk is long gone. So, methinks, get on the Internet, find it, order another one.
They don’t make 'em.
They don’t make 'em cause a couple of them caused injury. 
Now, having had one of these things, and being a terrible klutz myself, at times, I cannot fathom how it could cause injury. Maybe if you worked hard enough you could hang yourself? But no–it was plastic. It would have broken before causing strangulation. Maybe you could strain your back while reaching up to unhook the laundry-bag part of the Dirty Dunk? Or stand on a chair to reach it and fall off? Or break a fingernail during the process of unloading?
Maybe it broke, and some stupid maladjusted fool opened a vein on the plastic shards? Or . . . it fell down . . . well, I have a pretty good imagination, and frankly, it’s failed. Even if the thing fell off the door (or wall, if you put it there) when fully loaded with dirty laundry including pants whose pockets were stuffed with marbles and rocks and toads, and landed on somebody’s head, I can’t see how it could cause any injury.
If it didn’t work out for somebody that’s a different story. But an INJURY?
Whatever the problem, the Dirty Dunk was recalled, the maker decided not to make any more, and the only thing more innocent than a Dirty Dunk that has been recalled in my lifetime was the Fisher Price Little People (because a kid who was dedicated to self-destruction and not properly supervised could put one in its mouth and choke on it, apparently.)
)sigh( I will have to get creative and make my own. Thanks a lot, you pussies who propagated the recall of a laundry hamper.
Oh! I know how you can hurt yourself on one of those!!
My mom worked with some guys who had one of those little basketball things hanging on the doorway. They were messing around and one went up for a dunk. His wedding ring got hooked on the door and ripped his finger off.
(note: I’m not saying those things shouldn’t be available at all because of injuries like that, I’m just saying I know of an injury that occurred while someone was using one)