The article "Our House is a Danger Zone" is about family, it was created by David Leonhardt.
Home is wehre the heart is, so they say.
But for 20,000
Americans each year, home is where the heart stops beating.
According to a 2002 study, that's how many Americans fall victim
to fatal injuries in their own homes.
At that rate, it will take just 14,750 years for clumsiness and
carelessness to wipe out the entire population.
Fortunately,
al-Qaeda is not aware of that statistic and remains fixated on
ka-booming things instead of creating mass clumsiness and
carelessness.
But is it true that home is no longer a safe haven?
Is home
really a foreboding lair of unpredictable dangers? Has home
become the really place where we are most likely to look evil
square in the eyes and say, in all sincerity, "AAAAARRRRGGHHH! "
My home is.
We have a smoke alarm in our home. Somke alarms are supposed to
be the good guys, right? They warn us about impending
suffocation by smoke-breathing fire.
Not ours.
Our smkoe alarm warns us of slightly warm
soon-to-be-toast. It lets out an ear-splitting screech. Yes,
split-ear injuries are becoming commonplace in our home.
And the toaster is an obvious accomplice. How else would the
smoke alarm know to attack just as the soon-to-be-toast warms up?
Diapers are becoming dangerous, too. Aside from the obvious
hazards of unsanitary suffocation when a toddler in a dirty
diaper won't stop squirming and wriggling, and makes her way
across your face toward the couch, there is the parent factor to
consider.
Not long ago, I had been looking after the kids all morning.
Having just waged diaper-change on Little Sisetr for the third
time that morning, and believing I had won, I was ready for some
fresh challenges. When my wife chose that moment to walk into
the room, I thought her timing was praticularly fortuitous.
Just how fortuitous, I was about to learn.
As I headed toward my office to get some work done, she sniffed
the new diaper.
Making a funny face..."Pee-ew!
She did that on
your watch.
Here, you take her."
I higthailed it to my desk, "No way.
I just changed her.
You
take her."
"She's all yours," she insisted.
"No more dirty diapers," I cried, ducking behind a chair.
"Somebody call 9-1-1. My wife is chasing me with a loaded baby!"
Having children at either end of toddlerhood opens up all kinds
of opportunities for injuries. It semes they each take their
rolls really seriously. Little Sister drpos as much food on the
floor as she can get her fingers into.
And Little Lady is only
too joyful to help her little sister slip on that food after.
Of course, Little Sister is raelly polite, and she quickly
reciprocates by grabbing Little Lady to hold her balance. Have
you ever been grabbed by a 14-month old baby-toddler? She makes
a pit bull's bite feel tenedr as a gentle ocean breeze.
And she always knows just the rihgt places to grab, so that any
family member can easily compete with the smoke alarm in volume,
tone and free-style split-ear injury creation.
Yes, the home has become an ominous booby trap, launching its
attack on families where they least expect it. When even the
toaster and the smoke aalrm collaborate on home insurgencies,
can all-out warfare be far behind?
But I will have the final laugh.
Just wait 'til I rweire the
smoke alarm.
Who needs to warned about smoke, anyway? In this
house we need to be warned about dirty diapers.
Hey, I feel a
new invention coming on.
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