Quote Originally Posted by Matt the Funk
It's not the kids. It's the parents and goverment.
In alot of ways that simple statement is correct. The litigenous society has made schools and parents overly cautious for the fear of lawsuits. Elementary schools are banning games like "tag" for the fear of lawsuits. Hell, when I was a kid the most popular game was Smear the Queer or in todays vocabulary...Smear the non-hetero. It was like tag, except the person with the ball would be gang tackled without rules. The only retribution was to smear the next guy with the ball even harder. Kids and parents in my day (70's) didn't run whining to school officials if someone got hurt...it was accepted that it was part of being a kid.

Furthermore, I had a last name that people could easily make fun of, plus I was Polish (even though my name didn't refect it) during the height of Polish jokes. Guess what...I learned to...now get this...laugh at myself and have a sense of humor. Everything is so personalized and internalized these days that I fear almost every kid has the potential to go Columbine if something goes bad for them.