Helmet Head

Yesterday, Tucker’s backpack came home with an official Helmet Authorization Form.  I guess the little kids get access to tricycles and Big Wheels during gym, but are not allowed to participate unless they’re wearing a helmet.  As parents, we must choose whether to provide a helmet, utilize a school one or choose the third option reserved for only the meanest among us: “I do not want my child to ride a tricycle and other big-wheel toys and/or I do not want my child to wear a helmet.  I understand that he or she will no longer be permitted to ride the tricycles or tricycle-like riding toys at school.”  We were assured that if we choose to utilize the school’s supply, all helmets are sanitized after each use in order to prevent the spread of head lice.  Shudder.  Obviously, Tucker is the now proud owner of a bike helmet.

I know that the use of helmets has decreased the number of sad stories of brain injury (and the school’s liability insurance) but really?  A helmet for a tricycle? You’ve got to be kidding me. Tucker has his own tricycle and it’s never even occurred to me to make him wear a helmet to ride it.  His butt’s maybe three inches from the pavement.  He’s more likely to receive a head injury by falling from a running position. Seriously.  Think about it.  Anyway, having made today’s purchase made me think about all of the really cool things we used to do as kids that Tucker will never do, even wearing protective head gear.  Here are a few that came to mind:

• Sit on his dad’s lap while driving
• Sit in the car alone while Robert and I finish dinner, because he wasn’t behaving in the restaurant
• Lie on top of a bunch of camping gear in the back of the car, seatbelts tucked under the folded-down seat
• Ride in the back of a pick-up truck
• Sit on the floor in his grandma’s station wagon because the bigger kids are already taking every inch of the backseat and whatever the area behind the backseat in a station wagon is called
• Find a book in the library using a card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System
• And the one that I feel the most sad and nostalgic about:  Be outside, somewhere, all day long without ever calling home

We also skied without helmets, bicycled without them and even careened down the hill on a homemade go-cart which consisted of a steering wheel, a piece of plywood, and four wheels (if we needed to stop or slow down, we’d just drag our feet behind the thing using our shoe rubber as brakes).  Fun, helmetless days those were.  Amazing to think that we survived, isn’t it?

I apologize for the overuse (14 times including the 2 here) of the word “helmet” but honestly, other than protective head gear, which would have been annoying had I used it more than once, there really are no other words for helmet. 

Because I can’t find any old photos of us in the back of my grandma’s station wagon, I’ve drawn you another really bad picture so that you can remember the innocent bliss of climbing over a bunch of laps to punch your brother.  Oh, and her car did have doors and side panels (green with fancy 70’s faux-wood trim) but if I drew those, you wouldn’t be able to see into the car.  Duh.