[Ski]

[IanB]

What makes me shake my head is the habitual use of hand sanitizers and such. Neighbors' kids are playing around and one falls down and gets a little lawn-burn on his knee - and all three mothers come running over brandishing Purell and Bactine. I mean seriously, no blood, just a little redness, and they all act like he's been exposed to bubonic plague. What can I say, I live on Bainbridge Island. 30 years ago my classmates and I would beat each other with sticks and lengths of garden hose. We had bottle rocket wars, BB gun wars, and, until we got busted, had some great times throwing Molotov cocktails at each other in front of a derelict, concrete Navy building. Then one of us got an older brother to buy us the Improvised Munitions Handbook, and among many other things we cooked up methyl nitrate dynamite. Very satisfying explosion - much better than our puny pipe bombs. And nobody lost even a little finger or an eye... Ah, the good ol' days!

[Randito]

I think there are a few factors at work in this: 1) Families today usually have one or two kids -- three or more is rare. I was a mostly ignored third child and got away with a lot more michief than my older siblings. My own third child also "got away" with a lot more as we had relaxed somewhat by then. My second child had some resentments about this, but has forgiven us (for the most part) 2) My parents (born in the '20s) experienced real hardship, danger and loss during their lives in the '30s and '40s -- when they were raising their kids '50s and '60s suburban life was so much better than any thing they had experienced that they relaxed a bit about minor things like skinned knees and broken bones. People in the USA haven't faced those kinds of hardships in many decades -- so small problems and dangers are magnified in their appearance.