I generally try to read the regional alabama news as often as I have time. Every Monday without fail they report on 5 - 10 deaths on Alabama highways over the weekend - usually 9 out of 10 of these fatalities are people who were NOT wearing seatbelts at the time of the accident.

Seatbelts are EASY to use, not anywhere near as uncomfortable some would have you believe, and required by law in many states. For years I hated the idea of wearing seatbelts. My parents never buckled up, and when learning to drive I never learned to buckle up. Just seemed unnecessary and uncomfortable for me. At some point I began to realize that I am a mortal human, and I will die at some point. Ultimately I can't control when or where, but why tempt fate and encourage it to happen now?

Long story short (yeah, too late), it has become a habit - one I'm proud of myself for having. It takes about one second to do when I get in the car, and I rarely realize I'm even wearing a seatbelt anymore. The question is, why are people STILL not wearing seatbelts? Does everyone think "it won't happen to me"? Is everyone lazy? What gives?

Chances are good that if you're over 20, you've had at least one experience involving a shiny metal object and a 110-volt electrical outlet during your childhood. Did you ever intentionally bring a metal object near an outlet after that? No, I thought not. Part of growing up is testing boundaries, making mistakes, and getting hurt.

One of my neighbors bought a trampoline for their kids this week. Now, I have not seen a trampoline since my childhood, so I'm quite taken back and how "safe" they've become. Every metal surface is covered with at least four inches of foam padding, and there is literally a four foot high net that surrounds the jumping area to keep the kids from falling out. Understand I'm not advocating kids plummet to their death while enjoying some time away from the Xbox, but it got me to thinking about all of the other things that have changed since I was young.

We fell off trampolines. We jumped our bikes off 4 foot ramps built from old plywood and sometimes we didn't land rubber side down. We had monkey bars, slides 20 feet off the ground, and some of us touched the bright glowy red part of the stove ONCE. We all lived, and most of us picked up cool scars and stories in the process. We grew. We learned. Someone pointed out to me recently that it's not our choices that most shape our lives, but our mistakes. By child-proofing the world and placing kids in a bubble, are we taking away their ability to simply be kids?

Thanks to the magic of slashcode and the nice folks at Andover/OSDN, any idiot with something to say now has a place to say it - user journals. This idiot is going to use his for weekly rants. Will anyone notice? Will anyone care? Will anyone read them? It doesn't matter. It's my duty as a deacon in the Church of Truth to point out stupidity and hypocracy as it exists in society today. That is the goal of this journal: to provoke thought, and maybe bring a little sanity to an insane world.