A couple of days ago, a volunteer Little League coach in a town just south of here was ticketed (ten times--$300 worth) for loading his ten-kid team into the back of his pickup truck and driving them for a victory treat at a local ice cream shop. People in the town were enraged, and the online discussions about the incident have been 50/50 in blame-placing. Half of the commenters are unhappy that things have come to this--that a local policeman couldn't have overlooked the law violation in support of the team; the other half defended the policeman saying he was just doing his job because the coach broke the law. (The kids were not restrained by seatbelts.) The jury of public opinion is still out on this one.
I don't know what to think. Every kid in the US who has any ties at all to rural America has ridden, unrestrained, in the back of Grandpa's or Uncle Joe's pickup. Including me. We were instructed to sit down in the truck bed and hang on...and not to stand up until the truck was stopped. It was a rite of passage. Great fun! I remember those times as some of the most carefree summer days of my young life. Of course, things were different back then.
I was also, as an adult teacher responsible for the safety of my students, put on the other side of the fence when one of my disgruntled students said he should just blow up the school. (This was soon after the Columbine situation.) I knew he was just angry, and I was pretty sure he wasn't capable of doing anything like that, but because he said it in front of other students, I was stuck. If he HAD come back and blown up the school, someone of the witness students could have said, "Ms. McNary heard him say he would do it, and she didn't do anything." Thus, to cover my rear, I reported his threat to the principal. The student--who actually did not live within the boundaries of our attendance area--was suspended for good. I felt bad about that, but it was him or me. In this litigious society, I preferred that it be he.
A number of years ago, I became outraged when I read a news story about a 14-year-old youngster who died when the bucket-lift he took a joy-ride in lifted to the ceiling of a gymnasium and crushed him against it. It was at a school that was under construction and long after hours. There was a construction fence surrounding the gym. The gym was locked. The kid, however, scaled the fence, broke into the gym, found a key in the ignition of the bucket lift, and decided to take a ride. Guess who took the blame for that one? Not the parents who didn't know where their kid was. Not the kid who had thwarted two obstacles to keep him safe. The poor hapless construction worker who left the key in the bucket lift, thinking it was okay to do so!
It is like last summer's State Fair disaster in Indianapolis when a stage rigging fell over in a storm and killed seven people. Bad weather was predicted, but a rogue wind blew 30 minutes before the storm hit. It was sudden and unexpected. Still, blame-placing abounded. (Still does.) The State Fair was cited for bad construction of the stage. The company responsible for constructing the stage was cited. The band that was to perform was cited for not canceling their concert, keeping fans waiting for the concert to start. Blah, blah, blah. At no point does anyone say, "Hey...it looked bad out there so I decided to take cover until it passed."
The difference between when I was a kid and now is that no one believes in accidents anymore. In my definition, an accident is something that happens without knowledgable anticipation. An act of God, so to speak. Oh, sure...the coach transporting the kids in his truck might not have anticipated a bump in the road that could have thrown a kid out, or someone rear-ending him on his 15 mph trek with his precious load. I get it. Really.
My own family had an avoidable tragedy when my toddler sister got entangled in blind cords and strangled to death in her crib back in the 40s before I was born. If everyone had the knowledge to look out for that back then, there could have been blame. As it was, the family felt awful enough. Barbara would have been no less dead if the family could have had a villain.
Sometimes, I think we are losing our minds as a society. Instead of trying to find someone or something to blame for our tragedies, we need to get back to basics. What has happened to common sense? I wish I knew!
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