Vegemite: DeerNuts: Thank the FSM. Has the pendulum finally swung back to sanity?

One can only hope.

Tick-tock.

I guess my childhood was special.

Now see Mom's sitting with their kids in their mini vans waiting on the bus every morning. Kids who are sophomores and juniors in high school

When I was in kindergarten I walked a mile to the local school.
This day and age I would be scared to let my kid do the same thing.
However, doing stuff in the neighborhood - no issues. I once picked him up on the other side of the neighborhood to go to a pizza place and withing a minutes my car was surrounded by police - someone had called in that they knew the kid but did not recognize me "luring the kid" into the car. The cops would not tell me who called, but one of them did take some cash from me to get her flowers and deliver them with my thanks.
She did call to say "sorry" when she got the flowers - I told her that I was happy that she did it.

I remember being a kid riding my bike and wondering where the fark the other kids were. It actually might have helped me go outside more as a kid; I had a terrifying fear of the sun.

/Which probably spared me a few sunburns...
//It's just really, really bright, and took a lot of getting used to.

We're scared, says Skenazy, because every time something happens to a child, the story goes viral through media channels and gives parents another reason to lock their kids indoors.

That pretty well sums it all up right there. The media has gone insane for ratings.

I grew up through the 50's and 60's and around 1957, in my small town, we moved into a rural area where my home was one of two on a wooded block, behind me, there was one house, then an empty wooded block and in the entire subdivision, probably only 15 houses in a 10 block area. The roads were dirt, many unused and over grown. I had acres and acres of wild wood to explore and play in and did so with gusto.

I'd wander off during the day and my Mom would beep the car horn to call me home. Usually, I was so far away or deep in the woods that I could not hear her voice.

My friends loved to come to my house because of all of the wooded miles and unexplored terrain.

We didn't even fear the huge main canals that dotted the area because hunters were well on their way to turning the nasty Florida alligator into a thing of the past.

I had a rich and delightful childhood. In the small town, you didn't fear strangers, knew the pain in the arses, were taught to respect adults and the mailman was a guy to be respected, not the butt of 'Postal' jokes like today. You even knew most of the cops and they didn't treat you badly.

Today, things are dramatically different. The local population has quadrupled and quadrupled again. My spacious neighborhood is now a crowded subdivision. The majority of the wonderful wild woods have been plowed down. Conservation groups protect the Florida 'gator until it's so numerous now that they live in nearly every pond and mud puddle around and are a pain in the arse. Plus, thanks to unmitigated morons, we now have wild Iguana's, Pythons and Boa Constrictors about.

Nearly daily, the news, in all of it's forms, assures you of a multitude of dangers out there for your kids. Ranging from child predators behind every bush, to gang members to a whole host of natural things which can harm you. Even going out into the sun without sun screen can turn a kid into a festering lump of cancer and if you swim in the Atlantic Ocean, sharks will get you, along with stinging jellyfish, pollution, a rise in the Lionfish population or some criminal lurking along the beaches.

Jump into a pond and 'gators might have you for a snack, it may be loaded with deadly amoeba, infested with deadly snakes or simply polluted.

Our schools, once open and safe are now locked behind chain link fences, have police officers on the grounds and a host of new rules that govern how you dress, what you can carry and what you can say. The city has nearly as many lawyers as doctors now.

Day after day, there are new warnings about dangers which can affect you or your kids. There are thousands of warnings and reports about how the very food you enjoy is bad for you and, suddenly, even your house might kill you. While milk, once considered a must have for proper nutrition, isn't even listed on the food pyramid anymore (bottled water replaced it) and is often considered one step below poison.

Along with all of that, we now have to wonder what DOESN'T cause cancer. Every year, more and more things get put on the cancer causing list.

Funny. I grew up without all of these warnings and I did quite well. So did my siblings. Then again, we didn't have everyone from every media outlet informing us how everything we loved could harm us.

I still like wild Fox Grapes, raspberries, the stems of sweet grass and I know how to suck the sweet nectar out of certain flowering plants. I like the 'cabbage' from a Cabbage Palm and I recall days of laying down alone, in the middle of a big, grassy meadow, surrounded by tall grasses and colorful swarms of Dragonflies, listening to the occasional drone of a distant, small aircraft, enjoying the soft wind and the rustle of the leafs.

I didn't worry about Fire Ants, Killer Bee's, lurking Pythons, gang members, imported poisonous spiders or catching cancer from the sun that tanned my young body.

Often, I chewed a sweet grass stem, enjoying the flavor and not wondering if it had absorbed some nasty stuff from some illegal toxic dump.

I was a kid and I enjoyed being a kid.

Now, I'm an adult and not real happy to be a 'grown-up'.

My wonderful meadow is gone. Someone planted a big house right in the middle of it. The county now cuts the shoulders of the roads and has wiped out almost every wild raspberry bush around.

It's hard to be a kid these days. Everyone seems determined to suck the magic out of it.