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peristaltorFrom this rant:
The Wife and I theorize the fear of tainted home-made treats was started by Big Chocolate. Hershey's, M&M Mars, those guys gained millions in the sealed candy market, probably by simply starting whisper campaigns in the 1970s that snowballed into mass paranoia.
So, hey, let the kids off the leash. Let them wander and grow. Sure, they might skin their knees on occasion. Everyone does. That's how we learn about hard surfaces and the importance of traction.
That parental micromanagement leash: it's embarrassing to all involved.
If you want to enlarge the fear!
As if you want it bigger. . . .
A couple hundred feet of cheap clothesline, electrical tape and Whip Dip, a pack or three of zip ties (various sizes and colors), two monster conduit pipes I snagged from the neighbor's free pile, 30 feet of 1/2 inch nylon 3 strand twisted line, two dog lawn anchors, 3 mongo eyed lag screws and a mega-huge spider for the center (from the best retail store on earth) . . . and voila! I'm ready to snag the little rugrats before they take my precious, precious candy! Bring 'em on!
I also need to take a night shot if it doesn't rain. The eerie blue flood light really brings out the white of the web!
It's not that I'm cavalier about safety. I'm just a sucker -- so to speak -- for the facts. And the fact is: No child has been poisoned by a stranger's goodies on Halloween, ever, as far as we can determine. Joel Best, a sociology professor at the University of Delaware, studied November newspapers from 1958 to the present, scouring them for any accounts of kids felled by felonious candy. And...he didn't find any. He did find one account of a boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix his father gave him. Dad did it for the insurance money and, Best says, he probably figured that so many kids are poisoned on Halloween, no one would notice one more.
Well, they did and dad was executed. That's Texas for you. Another boy died after he got into his uncle's heroin stash and relatives tried to make it look like he'd been killed by candy. And that's it.
Now look at how the fear that our nice, normal-seeming neighbors might actually be moppet-murdering psychopaths has turned the one kiddie independence day of the year into yet another excuse to micromanage childhood. (Emphasis mine.)
The Wife and I theorize the fear of tainted home-made treats was started by Big Chocolate. Hershey's, M&M Mars, those guys gained millions in the sealed candy market, probably by simply starting whisper campaigns in the 1970s that snowballed into mass paranoia.
So, hey, let the kids off the leash. Let them wander and grow. Sure, they might skin their knees on occasion. Everyone does. That's how we learn about hard surfaces and the importance of traction.
That parental micromanagement leash: it's embarrassing to all involved.
If you want to enlarge the fear!
As if you want it bigger. . . .
A couple hundred feet of cheap clothesline, electrical tape and Whip Dip, a pack or three of zip ties (various sizes and colors), two monster conduit pipes I snagged from the neighbor's free pile, 30 feet of 1/2 inch nylon 3 strand twisted line, two dog lawn anchors, 3 mongo eyed lag screws and a mega-huge spider for the center (from the best retail store on earth) . . . and voila! I'm ready to snag the little rugrats before they take my precious, precious candy! Bring 'em on!
I also need to take a night shot if it doesn't rain. The eerie blue flood light really brings out the white of the web!