While driving in my car this morning and listening to the local morning radio talk business, I heard a news story about the threat of children contracting disease from mosquitoes and other biting insects. This set me to thinking. Oh, no! Right?
Here’s what we hear on a regular basis…….in my words not necessarily the words of others who lament. Our children are fat, out of shape, physically unchallenged and ignorant to the ways of the outdoors (and I’m not talking about hunting safaris to central Africa. I mean outdoors – grass, trees, butterflies, dragonflies, dirt, the sun and the moon.)
To counter this we make laws to remove carbonated soft drinks from vending machines in our schools. A few organizations are making attempts and formulating programs like, “get outdoors” and other not so vigorous attempts at “exercising” (not exorcising, although some may need it) our kids.
While this is going on and more people are complaining about how fat our kids are (by the way, let’s divert attention away from the slob adults who have gotten so lazy, a shocking number of people are now buying electric buggies once used strictly by “disabled” people, to get around because they are too damned fat and lazy to walk.), our news recently glorified one young teen girl who had amassed something in the order of 35,000 text messages via her cell phone in one month. Her thumbs must be some lean and mean fighting machine quite capable of…of….of….thumbing a ride?
Our kids are fat and ignorant about caterpillars and angry worms and some are saying, “We got to do something about this! Let’s begin a program to get our kids outdoors. Teach them of the ways out there and maybe they’ll like it!”
So, what do I hear on the radio this morning? Don’t take your kids outside! The risk may be too great for them to contract some disease from biting mosquitoes!
Then we hear, but if you must go outside, make sure to use some kind of insect repellent with DEET in it. It’s the only proven and effective means of repelling biting insects.
Then we hear, don’t use any product with DEET in it because it is harmful to you and especially putting it on the skin of your children.
So who wins?
Tom Remington
