When I was a young teen in middle school (I'm only 36, so this isn't that long ago), we played a game we called Thump.  The rules were simple.  We played on those giant concrete outdoor handball courts.  The game was played with two racquetballs.  You threw the balls at the wall, and had to catch them in one bounce or less.  If you didn't, you had to run and touch the wall.  Meanwhile, everyone else could throw the racquetballs at you as hard as they could.  Hence the name of the game.

This was not a school-supervised activity.  In fact, school officials would probably have objected to it if they had known about it.  But, the thing was, everyone that played (and a lot of kids did) did so voluntarily.  We enjoyed it, even though some of us ended up with some huge welts from being hit with the ball.  In fact, I think I played this every lunch period of my seventh and eighth grade years, as did many of my peers.  And yes, I did end up with my fair share of welts.

The reason I bring this up is the increasing wussification of our society.  We have become so risk-adverse that we seek to blame someone else for every unpleasant thing that we experience.  Schools have outlawed "Tag" because it presents a risk of injury (read: a risk of a lawsuit).  Playground equipment like monkey bars and see-saws have been removed as "unsafe" (I grew up playing, alone with no adult supervision, on a play element made entirely from giant old tires and was never irreparably harmed).  This is insane.  If this had been implemented when I was a child, we would have laughed at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. 

You know what, kids will do things that a reasonable adult wouldn't do.  This is because they are discovering boundaries.  Not adult-imposed restrictions, but what they can actually do and what they can't.  They need this time to learn what is a reasonable risk and what isn't.  By eliminating all risk from childhood, we are on the verge of destroying the entire benefit of childhood.

I walked home from school by myself my entire life.  From kindergarten to senior year, I walked home from my school.  Alone.  I was never afraid of doing this and that distance ranged from two blocks to three miles.  I once came home with a piece of cactus stuck in my leg after jumping my BMX bike over a jump intended for motorcycles and crashing (oh, and I never wore a helmet).  I had pomegranate fights with other kids in the neighborhood (if you've never been hit with a pomegranate, think a rock or grenade that splatters red juice on you).  I learned that if you stick your foot in the front fork of your bike, you go right over the handlebars, but if you do it right, you can land on your feet.  But, of all these stories, one especially comes to mind.

One of the neighbors had a big tree in their front yard.  The dad cut the tree down, because it was a danger to the house.  Then he pulled the stump, and asked his son to get all the other neighbor children over.  We were given the opportunity to rip the stump into little pieces that could be used as kindling.  Every kid was sent home to get a tool to rip this stump apart.  I went home, and since I was denied access to a hatchet or chainsaw (I was six), I grabbed the first tool I found.  But while other kids returned with screwdrivers, picks, and claw hammers, I had grabbed a ball-peen hammer.  I immediately took a two-handed swing at the stump's edge, and had the hammer bounce back and hit me in the center of my forehead.  I was knocked out and my parents were summoned.  They took me to the hospital, and I was fine.  So, did my parents sue the other family?  No, instead they laughed at me.  They knew I should have understood the results of my actions when I started them.  I was at fault, not anyone else, and I needed to learn the lesson presented.  Apparently, I did.  I have not used a blunt instrument to dismantle anything since.

The concept of personal responsibility has disappeared in recent years.  Everything that happens has become someone else's fault.  Moreover, anything that bothers us is now regarded as legally actionable.  People sue neighbors who put up basketball nets over their own garages (because the noise of the bouncing ball is disturbing).  We need to return to the era where litigation was a last resort, a governmentally-imposed solution to a problem, and stigmatized as a failure of common sense.  Until that happens, we will live more and more in fear of everyone around us.  Because they might just object to some aspect of our lives and sue.