freedom crashes

 

Email is a thing of joy.


This morning my sainted brother forwarded an article to me.  From a fellow named Mark Bonokoski.


I don’t know him.  Not surprisingly -- because he writes for a Canadian newspaper.  But he appears to be a soul mate on at least one issue.  The neoteny of North Americans.


Well, not neoteny in its classic Betty Boop form.  But in the all-too-familiar guise of the nanny state.


What set him off was Nova Scotia’s decision to mandate helmets for skiers and snowboarders.  Even though, the number of injuries has been almost statistically insignificant.


He then recounts how it must be a miracle he ever made it to his current age.  Lead paint on his crib.  Bicycling sans helmet. No seat belts in cars.  Riding in the back of pickups.  Unsupervised swimming in a quarry.  Starting work at 12 on a dangerous tractor.  At 16 in construction with no safety boots.


That list is extremely familiar because I was just recounting a similar version with a good friend.  By attempting to reduce life’s risks to zero, the best parts of childhood are being sacrificed.


Almost all of the wonders of my childhood would make regulators quail.  Walking the railroad trestle in hope that a train would not show up before the other side did.  Swimming the Willamette River to our own pirate island to spend the afternoon.  Or pellet gun wars in the woods.


Those, of course, were the adventures kept secret from parents (as if they didn’t really know what was going on). 


But parents could be accomplices in fun.  My mother accompanied my brother and me in walking around our neighborhood at the height of Oregon's largest wind storm.  You gain a lot more respect for a parent who will walk with you while trees and power lines are falling around you in an Irwin Allen-ish adventure.


Or the time she joined us on our bicycles to deliver newspaper during a silver thaw.  All three of us would crash in a tangled mess at the bottom of hills.  Helmets would have been as incongruous as a tap dancer in Swan Lake.


One of my favorite scripture verses is Ecclesiastes 7:10.  “Don't ask why the old days were better than now, because that is a foolish question.”


Nostalgia for its own sake is just that.  Foolish.


What is important is to realize why we think so fondly of those activities.  Because they were days where freedom was valued.  Before we decided to sell our birthright for the pot of porridge that is safety and security.  A pot that is merely a mirage.


Bonokoski sums it up well: “The motorcycle I rode as a teenager could also be ridden without a helmet, and no freedom exists today can match that feeling of wind blowing through your hair at 100 miles per hour, not kilometres, as you put the throttle to a 650 Triumph Bonneville on an open stretch of highway.”


Insert Norton Commando, and Bonokoski and I could be experiential twins.


I thoroughly enjoy the age in which I live.  Especially the technology.  But it could do with a bigger dose of freedom.  Before we forget what we can accomplish as a free people, rather than as a secure blob.


Thanks, Darrel, for the reminder.