Aaaccckkk! Lipitor for children?

I would only a couple of things:

One, the parents need to get their own carcasses out the door as well to play with their children. Just goofing around, thank you.

Two, Half of all sports/play activity ought to be Dis-organized.
By that I mean, not in a league or directed by some organization or a authority. So, if the kids go to soccer and take karate lessons, there needs to be an approximate equal amount of just horsing around with a frisbee in the park or playing Hide and Seek or Kick the Can or (holy cow!) just walking around looking at stuff. Just with other kids.

Joe(You'll probably get to talking with them. wow.)Nation

No arguments from me, but I'm a member of the older generation. We didn't have computers or much, if any, television to watch when I was a kid. Admittedly that was a kinder, gentler time when parents didn't worry about their kids getting shot or kidnapped or molested. We were supposed to get our chores done and then were released with pretty much the run of the neighborhood as our play world. We were supposed to show up somewhere for meals and be back somewhere on the home turf by dark, but otherwise our summers were filled with horseback riding, sandlot ball, impromptu bicycle races, roller skating, and lots of cops and robbers or cowboys and indians.

Fast food was stuff that you cooked ahead and warmed up for dinner.

Fat kids were virtually unknown.

Meanwhile our parents, even the moms who stayed home, were doing some pretty vigorous activity baking, ironing, gardening, etc. or doing real honest to goodness hard work to earn a living.

Fat adults were not common either.

Not in my neighborhood. There were fat kids and fat adults, but we did have a mighty big group of kids, I'd say about sixty kids in the seven or eight streets that bordered the Valley Street Park and we had a bunch of fathers who would show up (to pitch mostly) a softball game or play one of us smartass teenagers at horseshoes.

(God, I loved beating Mr. Brown and Mr. Dion at horseshoes. I played so much I could shoot ringers with my eyes shut AND I DID when the moment was right.)(I have to say I had forgotten those moments until now.)

Fat kids were a minority. I could name them now if pressed. Dennis Anderson learned his freshmen year that being big wasn't the same as being fit. His fat old man, who worked with my father at Hamilton Standard, had to swallow a lot of guff as Dennis learned to lean down and muscle up.

Even when my kids were little (1970's) fat kids were still at the bottom of the bell curve and once they got out onto the soccer field or the tee-ball field, they got it. I saw many kids who at eleven were fat who by the time they played through the leagues until they were fifteen, had gotten rid of tiretube waistline.

Joe(girls too)Nation