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?
Football is a stupidly dangerous sport with very little hope of payoff for the parent. Compared to the other big 4 sports it is a sucker bet. I hope my kids like baseball or are tall enough for basketball so I don’t have to work. Also-assuming he is still alive that lawyer needs to be in jail. Just have the FBI follow him around for a couple weeks, based on the text I am sure he will violate something. Hopefully not a child.
“No surprise, then, that I can lose whole hours at a time following hyperlinks on the Web if I’m not careful.”
there’s always a suitable one:
https://xkcd.com/214/
“If you’re a Generation Xer, you might remember that our childhood started just chock-full of spring-loaded toys. ”
hell, I remember we had lawn darts.
I read that at first as “lawn dwarfs” and thinking that’s a bridge too far.
I had one of those, and the Cylon ship, and *2* shogun warriors. nyaa nyya nyaa.
I had a preference for Jane Seymour, myself.
Major geek props for working in the socialator line. I was ready to plug it in even before the jump.
I’m trying to introduce the clones to plinking, with an airgun no less, but finding a spot in crowded suburban hell is not easy. Worse, the SWPL’s around here will probably SWAT me if they saw it.
Yep. No dangers to children. Lawsuits and recalls should target materials dangers only (lead in the toy, etc), and never design. In the real world design isn’t safe, so toys should be free to replicate this without issue. Warning labels and parental common sense are the only oversight required.
I’m not sure if you’re trolling me or not 🙂 but I’ll reply honestly.
I think children should be shielded from some negative aspects of design until they can get enough of a sense of the world to understand how design *might* be dangerous.
As an example, I agonized over keeping my Noguchi table in the house during my son’s first few years. They’re not terribly stable and they can collapse, killing a child. In the end I simply didn’t let him in the room unless I was right there and watching him. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t been there to look out. Probably nothing, but maybe something.
The question is, is that a governmental responsibility or a parental one.
Would it be okay if Noguchi tables (had to look that up :P) were banned? What about being sued out of existence? If a mishap happens, is the parent liable for negligence or something?
For example, I consider it negligence if a kid is adversely affected because they had a simple illness which progressed because the parents decided to do faith healing instead of just going to the doctor, or if an illness happens because the parent is an anti-vaxxer. But those tables you were talking about?
I don’t know, and I can’t think of any guidelines to approach questions like these except for “that’s socially acceptable”.
When my youngest daughter, now 27, was 10 years old, the two of us fell about 30 feet down a very steep hillside into a riverbed. Her mom and I and her brother were looking at a waterfall in the Upper Peninsula and decided to walk upstream to see if there were any more cataracts or falls. We must have gotten off of the trail onto a deer path. It was dangerous enough that I had her hand locked with mine. We passed a small sapling that I grabbed with my left hand. Then she stumbled and I’m trying to hold 70 lbs of kid with my right hand while my left hand tried to keep purchase on the tree. Then it was trying to hold close to 300 lbs in mid air with my weaker left hand.
If I ever had an honest thought it was, “God protect my baby, this is going to hurt, I hope I’m not killed.”
It’s indeed true what they say about wanting to hear your kid cry.
Fortunately she landed on her knees on soft sand so while she was bruised enough to need crutches for a couple of days, she was otherwise fine.
I was actually injured worse than she was. Had I not been wearing shatterproof glasses, the broken branch on the log where my head landed might have gone all the way through my eye socket into my brain. Instead it just broke the lens, bruised my eye shut and then danced up my forehead and scalp, requiring 30-35 stitches.
If it happened today my then wife and I might get arrested for child endangerment.
Jack, could you please elaborate on “fragile adults”? Just trying to figure out if I agree or disagree.
Adults who can’t face any adversity, conflict, or difficulty without having an outsized emotional response. Like the people who non-ironically use the word “triggered”.
I have known a few Holocaust survivors. I figure if anyone could get triggered by stuff it’d be them. They’d laugh at these precious snowflakes. Somewhere, Rosa Parks is riding a bus saying, “Chalk!? Someone’s name in chalk terrifies you?”.
I don’t have kids, and since I have no idea what I’m talking about, I will happily comment about this.
Risk, hardship and failure are all important formative experiences and are essential to develop into a well adjusted adult.
The question is, how far should it go? We’re well past the point where a 15 year old has to kill a boar to become a man, and we accept that some amount of protecting kids is a desirable thing but there is a large gap between not having guns just lying around a house with kids and banning everything remotely dangerous. I don’t know what the happy medium is, but I do know that most kids who grew up playing Carmageddon, like I did, turned out just fine and I wonder if we are trending towards limiting things for the 99% just so we can deal with the 1% who will inevitably be a problem…
Who on earth thinks small children are naturally attracted to sticking a penis in their mouths?
Outside of that oddity, we teach children how to deal with risk by putting them in controlled risk situations. When I was ten years old, my father, who worked with wood as a hobby, taught me how to use power saws, like a radial arm saw and a band saw. The first thing he taught me was, “you can cut a finger or hand off with this thing.”
FWIW, when I was a kid they introduced lawn darts.
At one point in my Aspie dating life, you surely could have convinced me that *grown women* had no interest in putting penis-shaped *penises* in their mouths.
We kids loved our lawn darts, and No we never used those stupid circles. Everyone knows they made them so you could throw them at each other.
Speaking of tall stars, I was also a Ginger man myself, Mary Ann was cute but too short for me.
“I’m not sure if you’re trolling me or not ”
Mission accomplished. 🙂
“I think children should be shielded from some negative aspects of design until they can get enough of a sense of the world to understand how design *might* be dangerous.”
I couldn’t agree more, and I suppose the difficult bit is trying to find where that line is. Because inevitably someone will hurt themselves and be sued, and corporations *should* be protected by saying they made a good-faith effort to find where the line between “obvious maim-source” and “real-world design risk” is.
I fully believe that helicopter-parents (“OMG Johnny fell down! Emergency room trip!”) are a horrible plague. I hurt myself. I learned consequences. I even went to the emergency room for stitches. But it was all on things I could just as easily hurt myself on as an adult.
I see my nieces/nephews exhibiting some wild behaviour when they get hurt. For starters, they “look around” to see everyone’s reaction before they react.
I have no kids of my own (of course! Why else would I comment?) but my sister seems to have a good balance. She teaches my niece how to deal with dangerous items and disciplines accordingly, and when she hurts herself, she tells her to get back up, and tends to her wounds, but only if she actually *needs* it. Otherwise she ignores the situation. This has made my niece incredibly self-reliant, perhaps even more than I was as a child. It’s awesome.
Padded football was one of the most intense adrenaline rushes for me. I would sit in class all day nervous about it when I wasn’t thinking about girls. It was certainly the glory sport. I got my feet wet in weightlifting, which I love. Otherwise it’s pretty stupid. You’re garunteed to ring your bell and I got multiple shoulder dislocations to boot.
As a kid in the sixties, we had some friggin awesome stuff with which to attempt to kill each other or our selves. As mentioned above, lawn darts. My youngest sister got one stuck into her leg. After that she was aware that it is best to move out from under something that is falling in your general direction. One of my personal favorites, and the one my siblings hated the most, was the Johnny Seven One Man Army, I remember it getting taken away numerous times, finally never to be seen for another 20 years(my mother hid it, gave it back to me when I was in my 20’s, still have it, guess it’s worth a bunch these days)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Seven_OMA
And I don’t ever recall sticking any of it in my mouth and hitting the trigger on any part of it.
We also had BB guns, pocket knives, homemade soap box cars that crashed/collapsed with alarming regularity(7-12 year old boys are not good engineers), Tarzan swings(moms old rotted clothes line will maybe carry one 7 year old, but not 2(trust me)), no bicycle helmets( kinda wish there was now), and many other things I can’t recall at the moment(see comment about helmets). Despite our best efforts, we mostly survived but we LEARNED. If you don’t get exposed to some danger as a kid, you ain’t gonna have the ability to understand/deal with it as an adult.
grumblegrumbleoldwhitemanegrumblegrumbleeveryoneshouldberaisedtheexactsamewayIwassnortgrumble
Grumble Grumble spoiled millennial can’t appreciate anything grumble
sorry, I’m too old to be a millennial. but old enough to know better.
Mumblemumbledadburnedkidsgitoffmylawn
http://www.theonion.com/article/fun-toy-banned-because-of-three-stupid-dead-kids-290
“Risk, hardship and failure are all important formative experiences and are essential to develop into a well adjusted adult.”
Pretty much this .
How the hell are Children supposed to learn RISK ASSESSMENT unless they’re allowed to fall down etc. ?! .
My Son learned these things far better than I and although I was and am a *very* involved parent , I never ‘ helicoptered ‘ him , that would be , IMO , CHILD ABUSE by not teaching them how to survive and adapt when you’re not there…..
BTW : broken bones hurt _forever_ and the only chicks I ever met who ‘ dug the scars ‘ didn’t even come up to my incredibly low standards…..
Kids ; you teach ’em right from wrong and personal responsibility , wind ’em up and let ’em go (the apron strings/empty nest thing is a TOTAL BITCH) , they’ll be fine .
-Nate
“Death by Noguchi”
would look pretty badass on a tombstone though
Also be a great title for a book
I’ve read a lot of plaintiff’s attorney speak in my career, but never have I run across a pleading where anyone insinuated that children like to stick penises in their mouth.