December 6, 2011
I don’t know what’s sadder—that this country woke up a few weeks ago and read the story about a school in Toronto banning the use of soccer balls on the playground, or the fact that deep down, none of us was really surprised.
I know I wasn’t, because I am familiar with the Vice-Principal Law of Enjoyment, which states that for every instance of a child having fun, there is an equal or slightly more powerful force that exists solely to stop that activity from happening.
And every generation is different. When I was in grade eight, my school banned the Rubik’s Cube. Why? Because some kid was wandering down the hall with his head buried in the Rubik’s Cube, went headfirst into a door and split his nose open. And I’m sorry, I remember that kid—he was always walking into doors. In fact, if I bumped into him today, I wouldn’t recognize him without the nosebleed.
But the school’s rationale was “Well, we can’t have kids walking around with their heads down,” so they banned the cube. Meanwhile, it is because we wandered around with our heads buried in our Rubik’s Cubes that my generation can safely navigate through traffic on foot with our heads down while texting on our phones. You could say it saved our lives.
This is a war on fun. And it is a slippery slope. In 2014—and this is a fact—school clubs in Ontario will no longer be able to fundraise by selling chocolate. Only nutritious items. There’s your future, Canada: a sad child on your doorstep, trying to sell you a bag of radishes so they can go on a band trip.
Get used to it. Because if you let them take your balls, your freedom is the next to go.