I read a newspaper article today about the popularity of “Baby Helmets” in the United States.  Who knew.

There seems to be an influx of parents putting their infants and toddlers in these little helmets… to protect their noggins in case of a “Fall-Down-And-Go-Boom” Incident.

The meat of the article continued on with this notion: Baby Helmets may be doing children more harm than good. Apparently, the number of head injuries in wee-ones is relatively small. No pun intended.

Yet, putting a helmet on the kid… according to Child Specialist Tim Gill…. takes away the “FAIL” response. “That’s because children learn from mistakes. Human beings are nature’s greatest learning machines, and this kind of thing stops kids from learning the consequences of their mistakes.”

Helmets on Kids. Overprotective parents keeping their babies in bubbles. Which also causes paranoia and late developers.

Well… you can just slap me upside the head on this one. When we were kids… we’d ride our bikes in heavy traffic… eat Crisco right out of the can… walk 83 miles to school in 5 feet of snow. Yes indeedy.  Heck… I cracked my cranium a blue-million times when I was growing up… and look at me today!  (Okay.  That’s not the greatest example.  Forget that last observation.)

But you know, I’ve been saying this sort of thing for a long time. Kids growing up today are too protected. We have parents suing people for all sorts of things. Attention Deficit Disorder on the rise. Peanut allergies. Obesity. Those earrings that stretch the lobes into really big round gaping hole circles….. All of this comes down to ONE singular cause.

Bumper Bowling. You know what I mean …  .. … those rubbery barriers known as bumpers….. are placed at the edges of the bowling lane.  They keep errant balls in play and out of the gutter. Bumper Bowling was started in 1982 by Phil Kinzer at Jupiter Lanes in Dallas, TX. Way to go Kinzer. Brainiac.

I strongly suggest that this was the beginning of the Decline of Modern Civilization.  The Kinzer Effect.

Here’s the Deal-O-Rama. We don’t always hit the pins in life. No. Sometimes we throw the ball in the gutter… as hard as we take aim and try. But we step up to the old ball return again…. dry our hand on the neat little blower thing… lift that oil-coated heavy ball up to our chins …. and heave it toward the headpin again.

Sometimes we through Strikes. Other times… the old 7-10 Split. And yet others… our balls end up in the gutter. Not our minds. Our balls. But the fact of the matter is… we keep on trying. Not because the bowling shoes are so dang stylish. They are. We continue to strive because we have The Winner Inside.

So there you have it. Do away with Bumper Bowling, and things will start looking up again. Baby Helmets will disappear.   Justin Beeber will fade into obscurity.  Peace will take hold in the Middle East.  The grass will be green on THIS side of the fence again.  Unemployment Rates will Fall.  And Happy Days Are Here Again.

“Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is.” – Zig Ziglar