We have become a society of needy incompetent adults, that will fight for the validity of every dumb idea that pops into our heads, and at the same time refuse responsibility for acting out on any of those ideas.

Don’t tell me how to live my life, but I’m holding you responsible for protecting me from myself.

So I’ve pretty much just watched this exact thing play out on Facebook with the Tide pod challenge and I have no doubt that I’m by myself on this one but let’s reason through this and if taking these handy little pods off the market, or making them look a little less appealing is the only way to protect the incompetent, well then…

Sorry, I had to breath into a bag.

Last year there were 12,000 calls to poison control for laundry pods. I’m guessing twice that many would have called in except they were laughing too damn hard to find the number. How could anyone laugh at something like that? You obviously don’t know me very well.

Here’s what I think.

If I make a list of all the things that are harmful to children, laundry detergent would be way down the list but it would be on the list. And it’s not the children’s responsibility to keep themselves safe, it’s the adult’s responsibility. If I have Draino, or pills, or knives, or anything else that can harm my children, I keep them where they can cause no harm. I keep my guns out of reach for the same reason. Out of reach, what does that mean?

 Not likely your child is going to die from eating a Tide pod. What is likely is your child won’t try it a second time. Do we really want to drag the government in on something this trivial? 20 million children divided by 12 thousand calls to poison controll is not a very high percentage when I compare it to the 20 thousand calls made to poison control during the same time period for hand sanitizer. Maybe we need to make hand sanitizer look like brussel sprouts. Problem solved. You can’t get many adults to put that crap in their mouths.

And that brings me to what’s actually driving this lame story… I’m guilty of this too… the “Hey, look what I can do around my buddies.” I’ve done some pretty dumb stuff in sixty-one years and people gonna do what people gonna do.

The Tide Pod Challenge.

You can’t regulate stupid people. Oh, you can try, but what you always end up doing is pissing off everybody else. Have you heard of the Carolina Reaper challenge? It’s all over youtube and you can clearly see what will happen if you decide to eat the hottest chip on the planet. Folks pay $30 for this chip that comes in a red coffin just so they can say they did it. You have to admit that it takes a special kind of person to eat concentrated laundry detergent but hey, we can’t all live to a ripe old age. I could go on and on but it all comes down to this…

My freedom is more important than your need to be protected from yourself.

ws