I try to be simultaneously proud and critical of my Aspie tendencies, but there are times I’d give just about anything to be “neurotypical”, and those times have become considerably more frequent since I first got Internet access back in 1989. As a kid, I’d amuse myself by reading encyclopedias and the like front-to-back for no real reason. No surprise, then, that I can lose whole hours at a time following hyperlinks on the Web if I’m not careful.
Example: Last week, I decided to look for a picture of a “Battlestar Galactica” toy I’d had as a child. About forty-five minutes later, I’m reading the most fascinating-slash-disturbing lawsuit verbiage I’ve ever seen.
If you’re a Generation Xer, you might remember that our childhood started just chock-full of spring-loaded toys. My Shogun Warrior toys all had the ability to fire spring-loaded missiles; even my Godzilla could shoot his right fist off for no real reason. And then it was all over, seemingly overnight.
The reason? A four-year-old child named Jeffrey Warren, who died after choking on the missile from a Mattel “Battlestar Galactica” Colonial Viper toy. The excerpted text that heads this article is from the lawsuit filed against Mattel on behalf of Jeffrey’s parents. I’m not sure I’d want to personally know the attorney who wrote it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want my child to be anywhere around the guy.
As a child, I owned the Viper, and its antagonist Cylon Raider toy. I used to have them shoot at each other all time, particularly right after watching any of the “Battlestar Galactica” episodes that didn’t have too much Boxey and Robo-Daggit in them. Man, that was a great show. For the record, I always preferred Athena to Cassiopeia, which explains why I’ve kicked it with so many taller women but doesn’t explain why I’ve also dated a few women who worked as, um, sociolators at one point or another.
Anyway, I never put any Battlestar Galactica missiles in my mouth but I was seven at the time, not four. I never did any of the conventionally stupid shit that kids go to injure themselves; I was always doing unusually stupid shit to get hurt. Little Jeffrey Warren wasn’t so lucky. It’s a mark of the change that parenthood has wrought in me now that when I read the circumstances of that child’s death my first thought is, “My God, that’s horrible!” My twenty-something self would have been like “LOL SERVES THAT DARWIN AWARD WINNER RIGHT” but once you have a child you realize that the world is a thoroughly dangerous place to people who can’t read warning labels.
Children need some danger in their lives. Otherwise they become very fragile adults. I’m always surprised at the number of people who tell me they’ve never broken any bones or been hospitalized in any way. How the fuck do you get through eighteen years of childhood without having a few serious trips to the hospital? Well, watch this space, because I’m trying to figure out that answer so I can apply it to my own kid. Said kid, by the way, is turning out to be a very competent flag-football player. I was hoping that he would hate it, so we could do something that was less dangerous than football. Like, I don’t know, motocross, or BASE jumping, you know?