Live and Let Live

I grew up with parents that were anything but overprotective. I'm not sure whether it was because they just trusted me that much or that they just didn't have the energy. Either way I had a wonderful childhood with relatively few safeguards. I hope I can be half as trusting(naive) with my kids as my parents were with me.

• (Age 6) I walked a mile (0.9 miles) to school and back from the time I was in the first grade, without adult supervision. I still remember stopping with my friend Jared on the way home from school to play in the basement of an abandoned house. Good times.
• (Age 6-7) We had a great big field behind our first house. We used to spend hours in that field making forts and playing games. One of our favorite activities was to go back in the field with our bow and arrows and shoot them straight up in the air to see how close we could get to the arrows when they came down. Of course my parents never knew that, but it certainly made for some fun summer days.
• (Age 8) By the time I was eight we had moved into a house my dad built. One thing I loved about this house was that it was never locked. There was no need to ever knock or search for a key hidden under the mat. Our door was always open, literally...for nearly 10 years. I still miss the open door policy.
• (Age 11) Part of the joy of growing up was having an older brother that taught me things I wouldn't learn from school or my parents. Like the fact that some run-of-the-mill fireworks can be turned into some serious explosives if you squeeze them in a vice hard enough. Warning: don't ignite them while still in the vice.
• (Age 12) I was a skater in the 6th and 7th grades and that meant building ramps and modifying accessories for our boards. I loved that our garage had more tools than I knew what to do with. Skill saws, radial arm saws, grinders, etc. I think I enjoyed building as much as I did riding. I also enjoyed the fact that my parents trusted me with tools.
• (Age 14) My dad used to let me drive the truck in the back yard and sometimes down the road to grandma's house. It was a thrill. Not to be outdone, my brother put me behind the wheel of his manual transmission Nissan Sentra, cold turkey, and had me drive him and my sisters home from church. That was a tradition that I think we all passed down to each successive sibling.
• (Age 16) My parents had good reason to trust me. I was a good kid. They even trusted me enough to let me drive a van full of my friends 4 1/2 hours to the Sierras in the middle of winter to go snowboarding. Of course I got my first speeding ticket during one of those trips, but I still appreciate that my parents gave me that much responsibility and feedom.
• (Age 17) By the time I was a senior in high school I think I had gained the trust of my parents. As a result they never really held me to any type of curfew. All I had to do was call to let them know where I was and when I would be home and they would let me stay out as late as I wanted. I respected their trust and I never lied to them about where I was or what I was doing. It was a system that worked.

Aluminum Bats

A couple weeks ago I was walking through Walmart when I spotted an aluminum t-ball bat that would be perfect for Charlie when he is 4. So I bought it. I don't think he would even be able to swing it yet.

Then I read this article just now. It's about aluminum bats and the fact that many want to ban them because you can hit a ball 10% harder with an aluminum bat than with a wooden bat. That makes life as a pitcher 10% scarier than it would be with wooden bats. I don't have to worry about things like this with Charlie or Max for at least another 9 or 10 years. But when it comes time, will I be a parent lobbying for wooden bats? I don't think so. I see a couple of problems with banning aluminum bats.

1. As a hitter it is so much more fun to hit a ball with an aluminum bat. I loved the sound and the extra distance when I was younger.
2. There's not much evidence that it would dramatically reduce injuries. It's actually not that often that a pitcher takes a line drive in the head, and even less frequent that it does lasting damage. Can we be sure that a wooden bat wouldn't also do damage? I suppose it would do 10% less damage than the aluminum bat, but that doesn't seem very compelling.
3. If you were to ban aluminum bats you would stiffle a pretty stable aluminum bat making industry. I suppose it would likewise revive an all but lost wooden bat making industry, so maybe the net effect would be positive. But I'm not a huge fan of disrupting an entire industry for changes that probably wouldn't amount to much at all.
4. The most compelling reason I can think of however to avoid banning aluminum bats is that it is completely unecessary. Why don't you just start making light-weight helmets for pitchers? If the parents or the pitchers are concered with safety, have the pitcher wear a helmet. Case closed. And if they started doing that we wouldn't be disrupting the bat making market, we would be creating a new market for pitchers helmets. It would be a win, win situation.

Side note: I was beaned in the face by a 12 year pitcher when I was in Little League. The fastball broke my nose. I was back playing again the next week with a helmet and face mask.

Living as a Minority

I went to the dentist the other day and in between fillings she asked me if I supported Obama or Clinton. I said, "Neither. I'm a Republican." Then she confessed, "Me too, but since I moved to the Bay Area I don't dare tell anyone that."