Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Nonparents who are considering becoming parents, beware. In early January, we received a shipment from the US that my mom put together for us.  The most important thing in the shipment were Pampers (Tunisian diapers are inferior).  A lot of Pampers.  Over 2,500 Pampers. We are officially on the last package of Pampers for Reeve.  We ran out of the ones for Mercedes a few weeks ago.  It doesn't take Albert Einstein to do the math here--in about four months we've changed over 2500 diapers. 2500 diapers.  TWO THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED DIAPERS.  In four months.  Where has my life gone?  9:26:23 PM    Let's hear it. []

Better Safe..... I took Mercedes to the local park today to run around, climb on jungle gyms, go down slides and generally have her run of the place. It's a nice, big park, and she had a good time. I couldn't help but notice that the ladders on the jungle gyms have gaps large enough for any kid to slip through, that the swings are hideously unstable, and that there are any number mechanical problems with the playground equipment. I was reminded for the zillionth time here about the differences between the US and the rest of the world (at least if Tunisia is any indication) as it relates to safety considerations. For Americans, safety is an obsession. We don't always act in the safest way possible, but we often do. There are safety commissions at every level of government, local news is always talking about safety, nonprofit groups focused on product safety, safety advisories about everything from toys to traffic to airplanes to pollution. Many of the basic tenets of safe behavior are absolutely ingrained. What do you do before crossing the street? Look both ways. What's the first thing you do in your car? Seat belt. What are you supposed to do if you spontaneously combust? Stop, Drop and Roll. Everyone knows that. In fact, I'd venture a guess that 95% of Americans don't even think about these things. They just do them, they just know them. Safety is inculcated from an early age. Here are some of the things I've seen on the roads here: --A woman driving with her car straddling both lanes of traffic on the highway while her toddler--perhaps 2 years old, give or take a few months--roamed freely around in the back seat. He seemed to enjoy the view out the rear window that he could achieve by standing up on his child safety seat. --An incredibly high prevalence of "car curtains," which are evidently designed to ensure that no one can see in your rear or side windows. Curiously, these also seem to prevent the drivers from seeing out --An even higher prevalence of motorcyclists holding their helmets in their laps while they drive willy-nilly down the road. Of course, holding the helmets with one hand requires that they ride using only one hand as well --Pedestrians almost always walking with their backs to traffic, often weaving, randomly, into the road --Lanes? Forget it. If I stick in my own lane and don't drift lazily and unpredictably into the lane on either side of me, I stick out like a sore thumb And there are other things unrelated to road safety, of course. I don't know how many lollipops or other pieces of hard candy have been offered to Mercedes. Choking hazards be damned. May as well hand her a raw hot dog to eat and a loaded gun to play with. Everybody smokes. Virtually no one utilizes car seats--excusable among the very poor, inexcusable for those driving a BMW. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I have to say, though, that it's a two-sided coin. While it's unconscionable to drive a toddler around, unrestrained, in a fast-moving car, is there any question that our safety obsession in the States can go to far? I only need to cite the case of the woman who won a lawsuit because McDonald's coffee was too hot to be safe. When I worked at the US Public Interest Research Group we had a consumer advocate who had to spend a part of every year writing a report on toy safety. She wasn't particularly into it, and no one really felt like it was that critical--if you're trying to prioritize work on global warming or toxic pollution or campaign finance reform, expending a lot of energy on Hot Wheels seemed kind of trivial. But the report got written because it always got the most publicity, and therefore resulted in the most money. Safety obsession paid off. There's a terrific headline in The Onion from a few years back: Fun toy Banned Because of Three Stupid Dead Kids." Here's an excerpt: Shortly before dying, Weiller told emergency medical personnel at St. Luke's Medical Center that he had shot the missile into his nose in the belief that it would travel through his body and out his belly button. "I've heard some pretty stupid shit in my time, but that has to take the cake," said Dr. Anderson Hunt, the attending physician. "Why would any kid think he could fire plastic missiles up his nose and expect them to come out his belly button? There's no point in feeling bad about this child's demise, because the deck was obviously stacked against him from the start. What we should feel bad about is the fact that because of him, millions of other children will no longer get to fire the RoboFighter's super-cool Devastator Missiles or soak their friends with its FunFoam WaterBlasters." As Homer Simpson would say, it's funny because it's true. It's better to be obsessed with safety than to be unsafe, I think. Better safe than sorry, blah blah blah. Nevertheless, I've learned a lot here about how safety-obsessed we really are. Are we uptight? Or are we right? 2:12:24 PM    Let's hear it. []

From today's Onion: Rumsfeld Makes Jerk-Off Motions As Powell Speaks At Cabinet Meeting 2:08:42 PM    Let's hear it. []