Political correctness at the playground.
{...}Deirdre Faegre was suspended for a week after repeatedly disobeying school officials who told her not to perform gymnastic stunts during lunchtime. "Our first concern is the safety of all children," San Jose-Edison Academy Principal Denise Patton told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Patton said Deirdre could accidentally strike another student, or injure herself, and other children could get hurt trying to imitate Deirdre, who has been doing gymnastics for five years.{...}Sigh. One must wonder what they think of round-off back handsprings (someone might get smooshed in the run needed to get the required force) or somersaults (she might give herself internal injuries)or aerials (Jesus, Mary and Joseph! She didn't use her hands to land! She could break a leg!). When I was in school, we had big steel bars on the playground, placed there specifically for the use of gymnastically-minded students. We had this one maneuver that we called the flip. Basically, you pulled yourself up on the bar, much like a gymnast would on the parallel bars, by swinging one leg up through your arms to pull yourself up. When you'd accomplished that maneuver, you hung upside down from the bars by your knees, your arms floating free, then you'd start swinging. The ultimate goal of this exercise was to get enough momentum going so that, at your highest swinging point, you would release your legs' hold on the bar, and---if you were lucky--- you'd land on your feet after flying for a small distance. Every single girl in my class could do this. I eventually got the hang of it, even after I'd landed facedown, flat on the ground, a couple of times and managed to knock the wind right out of myself. If you weren't careful when you were walking around the bars, you'd get a foot straight to the face. That happened to me a couple of times. And guess what? I didn't die. No one told us to stop doing this because we could hurt ourselves or someone else. They never told us to stop jumping from the swings, either. If we hurt ourselves, well, we were told to shake it off. I went to parochial school: our school nurse showed up a few times a semester to check on ears and eyes and that sort of thing. We had no full-time medical staff. Maybe, if you were swelling or something like that, they'd send you to Mrs. Sundell, the school secretary, who'd give you a bandaid or would send you down to the kitchen or the teacher's lounge for a bag of ice. Surprisingly enough, minor injuries aside, no one died and no one sued the school for not being responsible enough. In case you were wondering, I have two nieces who currently attend my old grade school. I know for a fact they still have those bars on the playground, and I know the girls still use the bars the way we did, almost twenty years ago. And my nieces, God love them, managed to learn how to do "The Flip," as it's still called, much earlier than I did. Childhood must really suck if you can't do stupid stuff. Posted by Kathy at November 1, 2004 11:16 AM | TrackBack