No More Fun of Any Kind!

I've thought for a while that our young country is too litigious. People are all the time suing companies to compensate for the fact that they (the people) are clumsy (woman spills scalding coffee on lap, sues McDonalds) or short-sighted (people smoke lots of cigarettes because they like them, get cancer, sue Big Tobacco). But that's not the end of it. All those lawsuits make people overly afraid of being sued and they end up making ridiculous policy decisions as a result. Most of them make me shake my head in sadness. Some of them make me laugh out loud.

For example, apparently some descendant of Dean Wormer ("No more fun of any kind!") is in charge of a school in Massachusetts, which has decided to ban the game of Tag, in fear that kids might get hurt while playing and hold the school liable. (I'm assuming the kids' parents and their lawyers would be the ones trying to hold the school liable, not the kids, but you never know these days.) It's not just tag, though. Apparently the school has banned "any other unsupervised game."

I can see it now... You kids over there! Step away from the Connect Four! You're not being supervised!

Seriously, tag! Now I haven't played tag in a long time, but from what I can recall, the most dangerous thing it involves is ... running. Sure, in the case of certain world-class types, running can lead to steroid use, but I think that's a risk I'd be willing to take.

I don't really even know what else to say, but I hope someone sues that school when their kids all get fat because they weren't allowed to do anything resembling exercise during recess. That would be some serious karma.