Every summer it seems like there is a new ‘killer trend’ that we have to be aware of. What I mean to say is that every summer there appears to be a rash of deaths that somehow could have been prevented if people used more caution and common sense. During the summer you are always going to have old people succumbing to heat strokes so I don’t really count that since they were old anyway. What I am talking about are the deaths that involve children. These are the hardest for me to bear and I don’t even have children. I guess it hurts me deeply because I believe that children are the future. And the more of them the better, to grow up become responsible and make their FICA contributions so that I will have some Social Security money to burn
right before I get the heat stroke.
Why does every decade have their child death scourge? When I was growing up in the 70’s kidnapping was the big thing every summer. There was also that summer in 1977 when all the kids were drowning in the pissy public pools. Then in the 80’s kids had to worry about stray bullets. The anomaly during that decade was in 1982 when a dozen or so kids died after their heads exploded from eating too many POP ROCKS and drinking PEPSI. The 90’s was all about kids dying while in foster care. Which brings us to the new millennium and the latest trend in children deaths – Hit and Run drivers.
New York City has already set a six month record for the number of people killed by Hit and Run drivers and with schools closed for
summer recess I expect the numbers to swell up by the end of August. Brooklyn is the epicenter for Hit and Run hell because it is home to the most uninsured drivers in the nation. And no wonder that no one
in Brooklyn has car insurance. No one can afford it!
Another part of the reason that children are so susceptible to Hit and Run drivers is that the time honored art of jay-walking is in decline amongst the youth. I blame this on the prevalence of PlayStation. Children no longer go outside to toss a ball around or grab a cat by its tail and throw it like we did when we were growing up. In decades past, children HAD to play in the streets. Sure, you lose a few kids to stray bullets but I simply call that ‘Ghetto Darwinism’. Any kid that survived the summer was built for the upcoming school year. My advice to all the parents in the cipher is to replace your childs
XBOX-GameCube-PlayStation with a Kevlar or Teflon vest. Kick their azz out of the house and tell them to play in the streets.
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