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The Dangers of Nerfing the World for Our Kids

As you wait in the check-out line at the local drug store, a mother takes out a small travel bottle of hand sanitizer. She proceeds to use it not only on her own hands, but on her children’s hands as well. Or, you reach for the peanut butter to make “PB and J” for your child’s school lunch. Suddenly you remember that your child’s school has a “no-peanut” policy. Or maybe even while at the park you see children running around, and out of breath, one of the children approaches the public water fountain. Before he can put lips to the spigot, his mother comes running over with a bottle of water in her hand. “Don’t ever drink tap water!” she tells her son.
I can say with almost 100-percent assuredness that all of us have been privy to at least one event similar to those above. You may have thought it innocuous at the time, but each of those examples is indicative of a much larger issue. For the better part of 20 years, many of us have been participating in the “Nerfing” of our world. Our attempts to file-down the “sharp corners” of all aspects of everyday life has produced a “made-for-TV” quasi-existence that our children are experiencing in greater numbers every year.
Those of you who are old enough, try to remember the late 1970s and early 1980s. See if you can recall buying bottled water in cases. You can’t, and that’s because other than mineral beverages such as Pellegrino, there weren’t many choices for bottled water. In fact, I remember a time when if you requested water at the local movie theater, they would force you to pay for a glass full of ice that you had to fill up at the public drinking fountain. Oh, the horror!
Bottled water is one of the biggest farces perpetrated on the American public in a very long time. We pay through the nose everyday for something that comes straight to our homes and is ostensibly free. If you have never quenched your thirst at the end of a garden hose, you haven’t lived. The ultimate irony of the entire sham is that some of these bottled water companies get their water by turning on the tap at the factory.
Before I was old enough to go to the movies, though, I frequently engaged in behavior that would make most germ-conscious parents of today run away screaming bloody murder. They might even rush me off to the emergency room for good measure to administer a dose of antibiotics.
As a child, I vividly remember digging up mud-covered stink bugs the size of hockey pucks and letting them crawl all over my hands.

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