Back in my day...

I dread the day I start referring to my younger years as the Good Ol' Days, but there are times it starts to feel inevitable.
I get that feeling when I read about parents attacking referees at their son's little league games. Or when I hear about someone suing McDonald's for making them fat. And I get that feeling when I read stories like the ones I've seen recently about schools around the country banning tag and other so-called "chase games."
I only have one specific tag-related memory. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I was a student at Afton-Lakeland Elementary School, which put it somewhere between second and fourth grades. We were playing tag on the playground during recess and one of my classmates, Bob Zajac, got away from a tag -- I might have been it, but I'm not sure -- by diving headfirst down a tube-shaped metal slide. I remember thinking it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen another person do (it's since been surpassed by that Japanese dude who eats all the hot dogs) and knowing that if I ever tried it myself I would brain myself on the slide's edge or twist my arm under my body maybe just miss altogether. Naturally graceful I was not.
Now, the game is disappearing from playgrounds nationwide. According to a Los Angeles Times story reprinted in Tuesday's St. Paul Pioneer Press, some parents are worried about their children getting hurt when a playground game turns rough and administrators are worried about the chance the parent of a child injured running either toward or away from a classmate might turn around and sue the school.
There was a time that idea would have seemed ridiculous (the early 1980s, say, when I was playing tag with Bobby Zajac) but times have changed. According to the group Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, a Montana man who legally changed his name to Jack Ass sued the people behind the MTV television show Jackass in 2002 for "giving him a bad name." Mr. Ass, who apparently changed his name in an effort to raise awareness about the dangers of drunk driving (I don't understand it either) asked for $10 million for defamation of character.
So, maybe the schools have a little bit of a point. If a person who voluntarily calls himself Jack Ass can blame someone else for giving him a bad name, nobody's safe. Still, other justifications for the bans make me want to cry.
In Santa Monica, an elementary school principal worried about the "emotional injuries" children suffered while playing tag.
"Little kids were coming in and saying 'I don't like it,'" principal Pat Samarge told Fox News. "[The] children weren't feeling good about it."
Somehow, and I'm still not clear exactly how, the next logical step became canceling tag for everyone, not just telling the kids who didn't like the game to go play on the swings.
Covering schools, I encounter this kind of attitude from time to time. Students don't get to win as often as they used to, because that would mean someone would have to lose. And that might make them sad. I once had a group of kindergarten teachers ask me if every kindergarten student in their building could be chosen Student of the Week because they didn't want to single one student out as "better" than the others. On one hand, I'm glad people are taking our Student of the Week designations so seriously. On the other hand, it made me want to go into those kindergarten classes and give the students the kind of speech I got from famous heart surgeon Michael Debakey when I graduated from college. Essentially, he told the entire graduating class they shouldn't set their goals too high because they'll only be disappointed.
True story.
These bans are taking their toll on kids. According to an October story in the Washington Times students at one Massachusetts school have created code words for banned games like tag. One parent declined to give the Times those names for fear students would face repercussions. Although it is far from clear how using code words would hide the fact kids were chasing after each on the playground.
"Hey, you kids running around after each other. Are you playing tag?"
"No, teacher. We're playing agt."
"Oh. OK, then."
This is what it's come to. We've turned an innocent kids' game into a taboo. We've told our children there is no such thing as a winner or a loser. And in an age when McDonald's and Burger King are making kids fatter by the minute we've discouraged them from playing a game that requires them to run as fast as they can.
Things just weren't like that in the good ol' days.