Recent Posts I Didn't Write

A few days ago, I was thinking of writing a post about danger and rules.

Lately, sometimes, I've been driving without my seatbelt. Not on the freeway, or even to work, just, say, if I need to go a few blocks in the neighborhood to pick E up from a birthday party (I know I could have walked but it was cold and dark and I had dinner guests arriving at the exact same time as the party ended). It makes me feel oddly floaty to drive without my seatbelt, and I'm feeling oddly floaty these days, so it works for me, makes me feel a little better about my lack of control over this world I float through.

Driving without my seatbelt makes me think of the time I rode a motorcycle without a helmet (don't I just get wilder and crazier by the paragraph?). I was taking the bus from Bombay to Goa, and I got off to get something to eat at a stop and the bus left without me, but with all my things. A friendly Indian guy with a motorcycle offered to take me the rest of the way, so I got on the back of the motorcycle, no helmet, and we headed for Goa. It was sunny and warm and my hair blew in the wind and it was just great. When we got to the bus station, the driver was unpacking my suitcase, which was a little embarassing, but it was worth it to have ridden on a motorcycle without a helmet, just that once.

Accidents, and paralysis, and brain injuries, and death. I know. Bad, all very bad, and we need to wear our seatbelts and helmets and be safe. And yet, can't we acknowledge what we are giving up by being so safe? And can't we admit that sometimes, in our devotion to safety, we go just a bit overboard?

Which brings me to the post I was thinking about writing yesterday as I waited outside M's classroom for our teacher conference. Those are some grim walls. Tile and lockers and weird board stuff with lots of little holes in it, and that's it. No rows of identical art projects, no arrays of essays, no holiday decorations, no nothing. Standing there waiting, I was not a happy mom committed to public school. At M's old school, the walls were covered with kids' work. At the public school in the next town where she has religious school on Sunday it's the same thing. What is wrong with this school, I wondered.

So I asked the teacher: Why don't you have any of the kids' work hanging up? She looked dejected and said that the halls used to be covered with kids' work, and then the fire department came through and made them take it all down.

Because, you know, there are so many instances of lethal fires caused by illustrated essays on Egypt spontaneously combusting in the hallways of America's schools (she didn't say that, I did).

Two points, then, a question and a statement: 1) Can we temper our commitment to safety with just a smidgen of common sense? 2) Remember to ask before jumping to negative conclusions.