Quantity vs Quality

Quality of Life Has Been Ignored

When I was a kid, we were allowed to take risks. Risks that are unacceptable today. I remember my ornery uncle (who wasn’t much older than me) tying a long rope on our sled and pulling us as fast as he could across snow-covered fields. He would crack the whip, and we would go flying head over heels. Scrapes and bruises were common. Grandma would shake her head and say, “You are going to hurt yourself if you keep that up.” But she didn’t stop us. She realized that a certain amount of risk was necessary to feel alive. I wonder if our human desire to be safe has gotten to the level we sacrifice quality of life.

Do we over protect our children? I began working for wages on the farm when I was seven, and got my first regular job in a grocery store when I was thirteen. Today working that young would be condemned as child abuse. During my high school years, I had little time except for sports and work. My social life was interaction with my coworkers and customers in the store. I missed out on having enough idle time to get in trouble. I missed out on keg parties and needing my parents pick me up at the police station. Although I spent my “spare time” working, I very much enjoyed my teen years. Life was good.

I didn’t miss out on the measles, mumps, chicken pox, and other childhood diseases. Everybody got those. We were kept out of school for a few days then resumed life as normal. I have read historical accounts of childhood diseases that were endemic to those of European descent being deadly to native Americans who didn’t have inherited immunity. We have through inoculated our children until those diseases are almost eliminated. When rare cases occur, they can be as deadly to our children today as they were to native Americans two hundred years ago. I wonder if we are better off?

We have also made great advances in protecting our adult selves. Remember riding your bicycle with the wind blowing through your hair? You can’t do that anymore. You must wear a helmet. I’m not saying helmets are a bad idea, I am only saying they change the experience. I do, however, wonder at the logic of helmets for tricycle riders. How long since you have purchased a new gas can for your lawn mower? The new ones are so safe I can’t get gas out of them. They have a safety valve that must be depressed by the edge of the mower’s fill cap. I have yet to get it to work, so I bought an adapter kit to bypass the safety feature. The new power saws have blade shields that prohibit the user from cutting anything including the piece of lumber you are working on. Have you ever seen a lumberjack wearing a full-face shield? I think OSHA now requires them to operate a chain saw.

In some cases, safety precautions for COVID19 have gone beyond reasonable to the absurd. I watched our Governor on the six o’clock news as he visited a grade school in Spokane. He was wearing two masks, one on top of the other. I wonder if he was protecting himself from the first graders, or if he was protecting the children from himself. At any rate, he looked silly. I would like the powers that be to look at the impact of restrictions on our quality of life. Not being able to host a family dinner party reduces my quality of life. Not being able to attend a movie or the Spokane Symphony reduces my quality of life. Not being able to take my wife out to a nice restaurant on our anniversary reduces my quality of life. Some of us are at least as concerned about the quality of our lives as we are about the length of our lives.

Frank Watson is a retired Air and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 20 years.