FEAR OF FURNITURE

I heard on the news today that a high percentage of household injuries occur from falling furniture.

Yeah... I had to process that one for a minute, too.

They went on to say that some things you can do to prevent harm from that pesky, dangerous furniture is to strap it to the walls and teach your kids how to behave safely around it, such as having the smaller ones wear protection if near a TV that might be in danger of falling.

OK.

It's fine- you can take a minute to process that. Go grab a beer, re-heat a Hot Pocket, and meet me back here in a few.

Back? Have you come to grips with all that yet?

Good.

So Americans now have so much shit in their house that they work and scrape and scrabble to be able to afford in a quest to make themselves "happier," and are simultaneously SO afraid of everything that they're now AFRAID OF ALL THEIR SHIT!

Seriously- a building, or an elephant, or a god damned grand piano could fall on your kid, too, but if that happens that's just some bizarre, freaky shit. It's not that he shouldn't be able to go outside, should've been wearing a protective helmet and body suit, or should've been taking weird Eastern self defense classes to build up his reflexes so he could just "Spidey Sense" himself out of the way.

And I really don't think the answer lies in nailing all your furniture to the floor. I know that if I see my friend's kid is in a neck brace, and they tell me a china hutch fell on him, I wouldn't assume that it was because the furniture was flawed or unstable, or (god forbid) plotting and insidious. No, I would assume that little Jimmy was acting like a jackass, and ran into said evil piece of shit furniture, and THEN it fell on him.

Unless you live on a sharp incline, have highly volatile floors, or live between two tectonic plates, furniture- especially furniture that can inflict greivous bodily harm when falling- seems to be pretty stable. Now, if you're eight years old and leaping around screaming like a lemur who's just been set on fire, then yes, furniture can no longer held up to the same rules.
I, for one, and...well...every other person I've ever met has spent their entire lives around furniture, and managed to avoid being aggressively beaten by a side table or crushed to death by a bureau.


Why is everything someone or someTHING else's fault? When can we start making ourselves and our offspring own up to their own bullshit?

Seriously... things just aren't all that scary and dangerous.

If you're that afraid of everything, maybe you should keep your child in a nice, safe, soft room. You'll have to bind his hands to his sides so he doesn't accidentally poke an eye out with those darn, dangerous fingers. You should constantly keep an eye on him through security cameras, and meals should be administered through a special slot in the door. The door should only open from the outside- you're in charge here, after all, so you should be able to decide when they can and can't leave the nice safe room. But don't ever let him out! Some furniture might fall on him!