It’s midnight and I am on-call tonight. I have been on-call many nights and my pager never goes off in the middle of the night. Last week I was on-call and at 2:00 AM, my pager actually went off! For those of you who don’t know, I work for my local hospital in the Pastoral Care Department. I am called in to support families who have experienced a tragedy that has left their loved ones on life-support with a grave prognosis. The cause can be anything from a drug overdose to a car wreck, from a pedestrian getting hit by a car to a freak accident, and everything in between.
Every shift, I come home with a new set of rules that my child is going to have to abide. In previous posts I have already established the “Helmet Rule.” That is that no one is to do anything, at all, without wearing a helmet. No matter how simple the task. I am wearing my helmet as I type this. Then came the “No Driver’s License Rule,” that pretty much speaks for itself. My son cannot get his driver’s license and will be under 24-hour supervision until he is 35 years old. My son and I were looking at a life without freedom until I came up with this brilliant idea.
What’s my brilliant idea? Wait for it … Full Body Bubble Wrap! Wait - just hear me out before you make a snap judgment. If I put my son in Full Body Bubble Wrap, every part of his body will be protected. No more helmet!
So he’ll look like the bundled-against-the-elements kid from “A Christmas Story,” but if I have my way, it will be law and every boy and girl will look like a sausage. If every kid looks as goofy as the next, we will have eliminated teasing. Drugs will no longer be a threat because these bubble wrap suits don’t have pockets. If my son doesn’t have pockets, he can’t carry money. Even if he did have pockets, he couldn’t bend his arm enough to reach into his pocket to get the money, never mind the fact that the drug dealer couldn’t bend his arm enough to get the money out of his pocket to pay the drug cartels.
Here’s a side affect I am sure you haven’t even considered: with full body, non-transparent bubble wrap ensembles, teen pregnancy rates would surely plummet! Virtually every parental fear eliminated in one felt swoop. The only way our children could fight is by popping each other’s bubbles. Snap! Pop! “Oh no you didn’t!” Snap, snap!
Here’s to a cushier world where our children can grow up free from danger, early parenthood and expensive, ridiculously trendy fashion choices.
