C: I am continually dismayed to see the Observer-Reporter picture children riding and jumping their bikes without wearing helmets, as on July 3. On July 11 your editorial starts out with the saying that a picture tells a thousand words. What are you teaching our children to do with your pictures? - S.H.
A: Before I get all smarmy and sarcastic, let me say that you do have a point. The photo you cite is a good example. As Byron Smialek wrote in his column last Saturday, the boy shown jumping his bike broke his arm doing so a day or so after our photo was taken.
Our photographers frequently roam around the area looking for things to photograph. When they do so, they often capture everyday life. That is, the real world. And in everyday life, many kids don't wear bicycle helmets.
The newspaper is not an instruction manual, and it is the intention of our editors to report on life as it is, not as it should be.
But as I said before, you have a point worth considering. When old editors like me see photos of kids riding bikes without helmets, no bells go off in our heads, no flags are run up our mental poles, because when we were young and riding bikes, bicycle helmets did not exist. We should be more aware that times have changed, that safety is much more of a concern these days than it was then, and at least consider these facts when selecting photos for publication.
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6 comments:
In this day and age, when parents try to keep their children hermetically sealed away from any and all potential trouble, while shuttling them from scheduled event to scheduled event, I'm not surprised that someone is aghast at the sight of a kid riding a bicycle without a helmet. Fact is, when I was a kid, back in the dark ages of the 1960s and early '70s, if we saw a kid riding a bicycle with a helmet on, we would have thought he must have had a plate in his head from some horrific brain operation. We traveled miles and miles around Claysville on our bikes, as I'm sure most rural kids did, and I never once heard of anyone getting a head injury from a spill, though I'm sure someone, somewhere, did. Maybe we were just better bike riders.
Would a helmet have prevented the kid's broken arm?
I know, I know - it would have prevented perhaps a
head injury that could have happened along with the broken arm.
Yes, it's great to have helmet safety but it's up to the parents to enforce the use of them - not the newspaper.
I am continually dismayed to see people dismayed that people take pictures of kids riding bikes without helmets...
Have you seen the little league games where every player on the field has a helmet on? With face masks? I thought it was midget jousting at first...
Not to be too disgusting... but I am afraid my wife's afterbirth is going to be packing peanuts and bubble wrap...
-ellipses
Don't forget to throw away that little white packet of stuff that usually comes with new electronics. Don't want the kid eating it.
I can understand the fear of a kid whacking a head on the pavement. What I can't understand is people being do paranoid that they have to wipe the handles of their shopping carts at Giant Eagle. Some fears are overplayed. How do you think we built up immunity? Maybe the Aztecs and Incas should have worn guaze masks and wrapped themselves up before greeting the Conquistadors.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. We are creating an entire generation of young people who are allergic to all manner of things. When I was young (in the Stone Age), someone having a food allergy was almost unheard of. Our parents fed us a wide variety of table food as soon as we could chew it. I had a sister-in-law who, a few years back, almost had a stroke because I gave her year-old daughter some of the yolky goodness from a deviled egg. You would have thought I had given the kid a nibble of rat poison. And it would never have occurred to me to wipe down the shopping cart handles until I saw someone do it recently at the Eagle. Didn't know we had so many lepers shopping there. As the old-timers always said, you've got to eat a peck of dirt before you die.
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