The Eight Never-Nevers
Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 8 months ago to Education
My kids' school plays this exact video, has them sing the songs, and promotes the message. Just read this summary because you can never get those two minutes of your life back if you watch the video.
Your grown-ups will protect you and sure things are good. They're there for you to keep you safe.
1. Never-never touch a gun.
2. Never-never play with fire.
3. Never-never go on wheels without a helmet.
4. Never-never dive right in. Ask before you get wet.
5. Never-never use sharp tools alone.
6. Never-never pet a dog without asking your grownup.
7. Check for traffic both ways before you cross the street.
8. Never-never ride in cars unless you're buckled up.
The cool thing is my kids seem to detect intuitively it's crap.
My son mentioned that adults who are old and gray and remember when kids could run around and play without adults constantly keeping us safe take it less seriously.
Possible reasons for the hyper-safety:
- Maybe there's a segment of the population, a segment >>50% women, who wants to focus on kids, but starting in the 90's started feeling uncomfortable saying their wants aloud. They did feel comfortable saying circumstances demand they make sacrifices. So they made parenting more complicated and difficult to get what they wanted without admitting it.
- Maybe people who were old enough to be aware of the Sept 11 attack but under 18, people who are now 21 to 34, were affected in such a way to make them more cautious.
- Maybe the hyper-safety stuff in the school is motivated to help the few kids whose parents are really irresponsible and leave dangerous things lying out without teaching their kids to respect them.
I do not believe there's a figure like Toohey behind it asking young people their dreams and then purposely quashing them. I do not believe politicians in Washington are the cause either; they respond to the zeitgeist rather than drive it. The only part I believe might be have a political motive is which one got the top Rule #1 position.
At any rate, the video reminds me how important it is to teach kids to handle guns, fire, and tools responsibly and to be skeptical.
Your grown-ups will protect you and sure things are good. They're there for you to keep you safe.
1. Never-never touch a gun.
2. Never-never play with fire.
3. Never-never go on wheels without a helmet.
4. Never-never dive right in. Ask before you get wet.
5. Never-never use sharp tools alone.
6. Never-never pet a dog without asking your grownup.
7. Check for traffic both ways before you cross the street.
8. Never-never ride in cars unless you're buckled up.
The cool thing is my kids seem to detect intuitively it's crap.
My son mentioned that adults who are old and gray and remember when kids could run around and play without adults constantly keeping us safe take it less seriously.
Possible reasons for the hyper-safety:
- Maybe there's a segment of the population, a segment >>50% women, who wants to focus on kids, but starting in the 90's started feeling uncomfortable saying their wants aloud. They did feel comfortable saying circumstances demand they make sacrifices. So they made parenting more complicated and difficult to get what they wanted without admitting it.
- Maybe people who were old enough to be aware of the Sept 11 attack but under 18, people who are now 21 to 34, were affected in such a way to make them more cautious.
- Maybe the hyper-safety stuff in the school is motivated to help the few kids whose parents are really irresponsible and leave dangerous things lying out without teaching their kids to respect them.
I do not believe there's a figure like Toohey behind it asking young people their dreams and then purposely quashing them. I do not believe politicians in Washington are the cause either; they respond to the zeitgeist rather than drive it. The only part I believe might be have a political motive is which one got the top Rule #1 position.
At any rate, the video reminds me how important it is to teach kids to handle guns, fire, and tools responsibly and to be skeptical.
SOURCE URL: https://youtu.be/x-dsAqJ3Ln4
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
You can find other links if you google his name. He lets kids play with fire and sharp knives, among other amusements.
The other day at work, some of the other old salts remembered back to high school when it was not unusual for kids to drive to school with rifles in gun racks. Back then, there were no school shootings. Note also, though, that they lived in rural areas, not urban. So, culture was a factor. Still, the point was made.
(Wearing a seat belt in a car is appropriate. Checking both ways for traffic is similarly a darwinian requirement.)
I like the idea of giving the older kids (maybe 10 y/o) who have shown responsibility the job of crossing guard, like when I was kid. It's a tiny step into the world of taking adult world of life-and-death responsibility, which we hope they are only a few years away from.
I think failure to launch kids into adulthood is one of the most popular PPACA provisions is having young adults on their parents' health insurance until age 26. Setting aside the other issues, it's odd that people well into adulthood would even think of being on their parents' insurance. Now people in that group call doing basic life management activities "adulting".
We also had indoor patrollers for the school building.
It would be hard to argue whether all of that taught "responsibility" or "authority." Our parents and teachers had to rein in a bit of (ahem) "germanophilia." (:-)
I agree with helmets and seat belts, but I will point out that car seats are more difficult than seat belts. I think if they came out with a design to modify seat belts to work for small children, we would still prefer a more ungainly approach. The culture right now likes to make caring for kids difficult. We take comfort in the ritual of strapping into car seats and strapping on helmets. Each little thing is no big deal, but it adds up to lot of hassle that makes us feel safe. I used to bike to the park with friends when I was six y/o, but now well-meaning neighbors asked my 8 y/o playing at the park if he was okay to be separated from his parents. The helmet is a symbol that biking to the park is a scary thing that needs special equipment and probably a parent hovering close behind. Despite their proven safety benefits, I almost oppose kids' bike helmets for that reason.
I would toss the bombs into a lake to admire geysers at least twice as tall as I was, blow up the sizable mounds of hated fire ants and to make a rocket out of an overturned bucket.
Ah! The good life! Bring back the good ole' days!
I would actually point my finger and mimic gunfire sounds while pretending to ride a horse.
And guess what?
NOBODY CARED!
Guns be used for good or evil.
Buried memory now emerges!
Recall a best friend's "big sister" (also a half pint) introducing us to cops and robbers.
Here we are at the police station.
Karen pretends the phone rings. She answers. "What?" she'd always begin.
"What?" we'd ask her.
"They're robbing the bank!"
You should have seen us silly little kids pile into an imaginary police car and run across the yard close together (because we;re in this here car) and simulate siren sounds.
"Wreee! Arrrr!"
Banksters loved what we did to gangsters.
Pow! Pow! Pow!
Looked like a blow torch had roasted the sub gun's innards and the clip could not be removed.
http://www.koreanwaronline.com/arms/g...
"Ratatatatat! Gotcha, Jap!"
That cheaper and easier to produce than the Thompson gun wasn't just used in Korea.
If you had asked me what could possibly be wrong with this behavior before I had kids, I would have been confused. I would have asked if the kids were skipping school or something. If you confirmed it was during recess, I would have had no idea. I think pointing my finger and mimicking gunfire was all I did during recess.
Apparently kids are not even allowed to pick up sticks anymore. I don't mean pick them up and fight or pretend to shoot. They're not allowed to play with sticks in any way. As George Carlin put it, kids aren't allowed to sit there with a F-ing stick anymore. https://youtu.be/K0MKBdD2FGA
What surprised me was that I could pick up all the local stations with my Direct satellite TV. They were more interested in rain related traffic accidents than they were the weather.
That same storm swelled as it moved into Georgia yesterday afternoon, forming tornadoes that caused damage.
Stores that sell fireworks year round are rare but I can think of a couple, though I've never shopped at either. I'm an old dino now.
Outlawed in Alabama are the cherry bombs and M-80s that were legal during my childhood. Either explosive can mangle a hand.
But kids can have .22 rifles and anyone can make a fire bomb,
more in Tia Juana and then have an unsafe and insane 4th on Esterro Beach including roman candles from behind the dunes ...and bottle rockets ...lots of bottle rockets which go well with (at then cheap) tequila.
Also one time my daughter (9 at the time) hid a bunch of M80s under the driver's seat of my van and I didn't find out 'till we got home. I was astounded--could have been blown through the roof. When I quit shaking I asked her why she did it, she artlessly told me, "dad, you don't lie well and I was afraid the border cop would catch us."
Do believe I was about nine when I learned that, as long as I was wearing blue jeans, I could just stand in place and feign a yawn should another kid throw a whole string of lit firecrackers at my feet.
My kids had a totally different experience with me.
We last Sunday we stopped in Missouri
At a gas station that had a huge fireworks store included and my wise wife said no fireworks.
It was good advice as I have a large supply in the garage already.
That fact that even against a week opponent President Trump only lost by 3 million votes is encouraging, but it should have been more and it does not give me confidence about these issues. I don't see national politicians getting involved, and I actually think that's a good thing because I do not want any action from Washington.
Tah-dah - perfect slave class in two generations.
Looking for opportunities to encourage, entice, goad, cajole, tease people into moving a little outside their comfort zone of risk, provides a platform to reverse what the enslavers are trying to do.
We have a lot of work to do.
A few of the others are pretty lame.
I know what you mean, but I state it a little different. It's good to talk to strangers, but never go off with a stranger. If someone's doing something wrong in public, I want my kids to feel comfortable telling a stranger. When you're not in public, be weary even of people you know, e.g. friends and relatives of friends from school, if they are doing something that seems questionable. That's the most likely scenario of them encountering a weirdo.
Also for an another at least, I do not require a bucket in a restaurant.
Be grateful that "smellovision" does not exist. I've read that it is a rare special treat in movie theaters~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veE1p...
Der Spiegel auf Englisch hier:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/s...
9) Never-never get dirty. Wash you hands at least once an hour with germ killing soap.
This is dedicated to the germaphobic paranoid moms.
Or perhaps, crossed wires in the brain in a constant feedback loop!
I have been to many against the war on drugs and the invasion/occupation of Iraq. I have never been arrested, detained, or even been the target of any abuse or overbearing treatment from police officers at protests.
So it will be so ironic if the thing I get arrested for is letting my kids ride their bike to the same park in Madison I road to as a kid.
When I was a kid a sizable percentage, including myself, rode bicycles to and from school.
There was just something about the way he always smiled when he'd say that.
I was born in Massachusetts before we moved. So from four-years-old on, I never saw any snow while growing up in Dothan, Alabama, half an hour from the Florida state line by driving the speed limit.
Here in the Birmingham area? Yeah, it snows every once in a while. This winter it snowed one whole day and stuck on the ground for two or three days more.
There was a very rare blizzard followed by a serious ice storm three years later back during the 90s.
Al Gore claimed the blizzard was due to global warming. Recall Rush laughing about that 'un on the radio.
PS...grew up in the central hills of Connecticut...with some of the steepest hills in the whole state.
One summer we went swimming in a lake with Connecticut cousins back when Beatles sang "I Want To Hold Your Hand."
They were used to some really freaking freezing water!
Half Swede me had been spoiled by a sizable lake in the Florida Panhandle my folks had a place built by.
Often in late August you actually had to swim down about five feet just to find water that would cool you off.
My Grandmother had a place at a lake on the other side of our town...always hoped I'd inherit the place but that didn't work out.
We New Englanders take pride in dealing with the cold weather and water...it's like a badge of Honor.
But it's summer compared to the upper midwest though.
It be them thar ain't gotta lick ah sense Yankees whut moves tuh Florida ter go swimmin' durin' winter.
I consider any star to be a wild force of nature.
Uh, but what warm water? Heated swimming pools?
Except to visit you sometime...would be nice, don't ya think?
My grandmother was one of 12 children, and her father was a successful farmer in North Carolina. In an era with less disease prevention, and a need for trustworthy farm hands, both were motivation for large families. Vaccines have made childhood survival more likely, and automation has significantly reduced labor needs.
I am under the impression that the fertility rate had dropped by the time I was born in 75, but the hyper-structured hovering starting in the 90s when the word "soccer mom" was coined.
There was an episode of Star Trek Deep Space nine in Jan of 1993 that reflects this. The kids on the space station would spend their free time watching ships arrive from distant lands. Sometimes they misbehaved and got in trouble. "The problem is there's no structured activity for them...," a character explained. I think the line reflects a cultural change in the 90s. The show presents the claim as an enlightened policy of the future, but I have come to think it's better for kids to spend their free time hanging out dreaming of far off lands than in enrichment programming designed by adults.
I just missed this this stuff. If I had been born in '85 instead of '75, I would never have ridden my bike around and had a kid world separate from the adult world.