What,, No Broken Glass??

I opened up a box of lead I bought and found a toy inside. I was pretty upset that my lead had toy contamination. It was almost as disappointing as finding out there were no metal shavings in my Girl Scout cookies and buying a bag of marshmallow circus peanuts that were actually fresh. Comes a time when you expect something to be one way and when it isn’t the experience is really crushing.

I sometimes wonder if we aren’t getting a little carried away. When I was a kid we didn’t have seatbelts, didn’t wear helmets or pads when we rode our bikes, I used mercury to shine pennies (the dentist gave my brother and I some to play with), and I am pretty sure there was plenty of lead in the paint. In fact I had some lead soldiers I played with all the time. Somehow I managed to live without any big side effects. Of course I was a finicky eater as a kid so never tried paint chips – I couldn’t even see the fascination with eating library paste. So I guess I dodged that bullet. I did work with hydrochloric acid in my basement. I also had a chemistry set and most of my experiments were pretty far off script. I still lived to tell the story and developed some stains impervious to the cleaning products of that time.

I guess it was kind of a right of passage. You had to experience things as a kid to move on. For instance, unless you were a total moron, you only shoved a fork into the wall outlet once. That was enough to develop a lasting respect for electricity. You only had to take one trip off the roof to understand manned flight without the proper equipment is impossible.

Now while I think seatbelts, car seats, and other safety gear are important, I always use a seatbelt when in a car, some things should be for the discovering. You have to have the first hand experience of messing with a bee to find out why you really shouldn’t. Having someone tell you isn’t enough, because the child needs to have the “why” question answered. The child needs the pain and swelling as re-enforcement to the lesson.

That probably isn’t the best example because my brother and I kept messing with bees anyway. In fact we had a game called “Clap ‘em” where you had to smack the bee between your hands. Bees are kind of like peppers in that size has no bearing on the power of the sting – the small ones were usually worse than the big ones. We also participated in a game where all the kids formed a circle around a rock. The kid that was “it” took a jar full of hornets and bees captured earlier, shook it a bit then broke it on the rock. Everyone had to run; anyone stung was “out”. Boy those bees were really pissed when they got out of that jar!!

Anyway, I think you need to let kids be kids up to a point. I know I am excited about showing my grandson the fun you can have with an ant colony and a magnifying glass. Boy do those ants get pissed off!!