I didn’t think things could get much more weirder than they already are, but I am consistently and constantly proven wrong.

The latest, if you haven’t already heard, is the campaign to brand food with labels warning against children choking.

The whole thing sort of reminds me of that person who spilled hot coffee on themselves and sued McDonald’s because they got burned even though there was a warning right on the cup stating, Caution: HOT!

Which is to say, we are a nation who has lost their common sense.

The group [The American Academy of Pediatrics] is issuing a new policy statement calling on the government and manufacturers to implement a food labeling system warning parents of these risks.

“This is a call to action,” said Dr. Gary Smith, a pediatrician and immediate past chairman of the Committee on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“For many years, the U.S. has protected children from choking on toys. We have legislation. We have regulation. We have voluntary standards. We have labeling. We have recall programs,” said Smith, also director of the Center for Injury, Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

They want to go so far as to recall foods that pose a risk of choking if necessary.

The American Academy of Pediatrics lists hot dogs as the highest risk food for young kids. Grapes, raw carrots, apples and peanuts are also dangerous.

So…..common sense should tell you to cut these foods up in smaller pieces. Seems logical. Or, don’t give these foods to your child.

This article sites this fact:

Choking kills more than 100 U.S. children 14 years or younger each year and thousands more — 15,000 in 2001 — are treated in emergency rooms.

While this fact is disheartening, AAP shouldn’t have to go so far as mandating choking warning labels for food. It seems overkill to me. There should be awareness, but not legislation.

…the American Academy of Pediatrics lists a few tips on its Web site to help parents with problem foods. It suggests parents:

• Cut hot dogs lengthwise and grapes in quarters. This changes the dangerous shape of the food, which can block throats of young children and even teenagers.

• Avoid giving toddlers other high-risk foods such as hard candy, nuts, seeds and raw carrots.

• Never let small children run, play or lie down while eating.

Okay. The above-it’s common sense. Why is it necessary for them to post this on their site? Are Americans really that incompetent? Or are companies making us think we are?

It seems that our nation’s retailers and I have come to a complete and utter impasse as to what “back to school” entails.

Different ideas. I see it as an opportunity to send our students off to school freshly dressed, pressed, and appropriately outfitted to learn. Retailers apparently see it as an opportunity to outfit our nation’s daughters for stripper school.

Where, pray tell, have all the sweet little plaid skirts gone? The Mary Janes? The pinafores?

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It was the use of the phrase “party circuit” that finally put me over the edge. The phrase, you see, was used in conjunction with the word “birthday” as in “are you doing the birthday party circuit?” The term used to explain that any self-respecting modern child must first have their “actual birthday day party” with cake and presents from immediate family followed by their “class party” whereby they take treats into class. This culminates In a blow-out “theme” party for the child’s invited friends at a venue sure to impress other parents and/or break the bank. If a child should happen to suffer the misfortune of having a birthday over the summer holiday, then the only possible way to remedy this tragic situation is with something spectacular. Perhaps you could rent Disney World?

Excess. Clearly, the days of warm party punch in Dixie cups and a cupcakes homemade by the “birthday mom” are long past. Now you’ve got to really put your thinking cap on (and credit card on the line) to plan the “perfect” birthday party.

Examples of over-the-top birthday madness include:

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There is a certain comfort to be taken in the knowledge that some things are probably never going to change.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence; the earth will continue to rotate around the sun, and I will not get even one iota smarter this summer over last.

Learned lesson. After three plus decades on this earth you would think that by now I would have learned just a little bit about sunscreen. You would be wrong. I have, however, recently learned quite a bit about aloe.

I sum it up thusly, on the first day God made the sun so the devil had no choice but to counter with sunburn.

For the record, I am much better at parenting then I am self-preservation.

Stupid mistake. Despite remembering to coat both children with a thick layer of sunblock, I still managed to believe it a fine idea to stand IN THE WATER under a blazing hot sun for more than four hours with nothing between me and the sun but my own stupidity. I know, just typing it I’m embarrassed all over again.

I honestly don’t know which hurt worse — the peeling or my pride.

What I really suffer from is a case of rampant optimism.

A little sun. Despite years of cause and effect training which would have trained even a gerbil to recognize “sun minus sunscreen = burn,” I continue to operate under the delusion that I, the whitest white girl in America — can get “just a little sun.” This is akin to believing you can get “just a little pregnant” or “just a little nuclear radiation exposure.”

I persist in this belief because in my teens I could — and did — tan.

Tanning goal. That was really my whole life goal back then. Study? Maybe. College? Yeah, whatever.

A nice golden copper toned glow — I’ll work on it day after day until I achieved my goal with only a backyard lawn chair, a couple hundred gallons of baby oil, and my ability to lie completely prostrate for hours at a time to guide me.

Brown baby. They also tell me I used to get “brown as a berry” as a baby. Apparently, I am supposed to take great solace in the fact that I was a real babe when I was FOUR.

Meanwhile back at the pool, well meaning friends tried to warn me. By late afternoon my back was starting to feel a wee bit warm and I thought about sunscreen for a nano-second, but my children blissfully sliding time and again down a waterslide and my need to be waiting at the bottom because, after all, how could I trust the no less than THREE lifeguards on duty, seemed the more pressing matter.

By the time we left the pool, my upper body was the approximate color of a ruby red grape. I radiated enough heat to toast a marshmallow and people just passing by clucked in sympathy and then, I don’t doubt, laughed uproariously when out of my earshot at how stupid some people can be.

Phase two. Now, a few days later, I am currently in phase two of the sunburn process, phase one being the getting burnt part.

Phase two is the back-slapping phase. In this phase people who have never shown even the slightest iota of interest in you previously, people who don’t even KNOW you, will suddenly be seized by the need to slap you on the back.

It’s as if there is a primordial siren call of seared skin. Seemingly unbidden they are moved to “slap!” you on the back with a hearty hail fellow well met even if they know not why.

As you cringe and slither to the floor in a heap of blinding red hot pain, they are left to state the obvious to soothe you, “little burnt huh?” “Little burnt huh?” is obviously code for “I hate you enormously and I wish to see you dead!,” that is the only possible explanation for this.

The only possible defense to back slapping is to make the universally recognized sunburn warning noise whereby you grit your teeth, pull back your lips, inhale briskly and spasm your body inward in the standing equivalent of the fetal position.

Sure, they’ll STILL slap you on the back, but with these motions you are slightly less likely to want to punch them. As if you could really lift your arms to take a swing anyway.

As the days have passed I have regained near normal movement in my upper limbs.

Shedding skin. I have also started to shed skin like a snake, lending whole new meaning to the phrase “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours!” My husband, lucky man that he is, gets to witness it all.

All I can say is that when it comes to reliving the sheer stupidity of the moment when I chose to eschew the necessity of sunscreen for the certainty of a not-so-slow burn, all I can say, is boy, was my face red.

That’s it. I’m done.
There is just only so much I can obsessively worry over and seriously? I’ve hit my limit.

Childhood obesity, white sugar, processed flour, artificial sweeteners, too much tv, not enough reading, lead in toys, toxic mold, toxic new homes, global warming, bullies, low self-esteem, high-self esteem, athletics v. academics, No Child Left Behind, whether seeing your parents naked will result in future therapy and how expensive might that be?

Whew. As someone who literally does “lie awake at night” worrying, this really cannot be good for any of us. Where is the study about what happens to kids with cranky, overwrought parents too tired to think straight? At what point do you have to start paring down your worries? There are only so many hours in the day and frankly, I may have to cast off lead and global warming.

Nutrition and obesity (although both my kids are slim) bears watching. Pedophiles and molestation I’m never going to quit worrying over. My kids will be 40 I’ll still wonder if they should ride their bikes alone. Seriously.

However, when do you just decide to put other worries on the back burner? To just start letting go of pretending we can protect our children from everything?

 Here’s the thing kids. I’ll recycle when I can but I think you are probably right to suspect I may be leaving the world a lesser place than I found it. We all are. Sorry about that but short of keeping my plastics out of the paper bins, I’m not sure what I can realistically do for you there.

The Lead Menace? Yawn. Overrated. Sorry but if lead is so scary why are all our parents and grandparents and the entire Baby Boom generation not brain damaged? Oh wait, scratch that …

 I’m not going to relax on “running with scissors” but I AM going to relax on the numerous things I cannot control RIGHT NOW. Or could lie awake nights fretting over to no avail.

So, um, eat your peas. Sit back from the TV. Read a book once in a while. Don’t chew the windowsills. Stay in my sight AT ALL TIMES and remember I love you even if I forget to worry about everything else under the sun.

And oh, that reminds me, I’ve got to worry about the sun …

So, what have you simply let go of worrying about?

More importantly, how guilty do you think we should feel about it?