Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

Invasion of the Funsuckers

We're under attack! They're everywhere! They're taking over everything!

The Funsuckers are coming!

It's Halloween this week, and once again the Funsuckers are starting up. You know them; the ones who live in mortal terror that somebody, somewhere, is having a good time. They have to suck the fun out of whatever anybody is enjoying. They come in several flavors: The well-meaning, enlightened do-gooder; the political idealist; the grumpy old curmudgeon. Here's how to recognize them: If their primary goal is to control other peoples' behavior instead of their own, they're funsuckers.

That sucking sound you hear is the fun being sucked out of every corner of our kids' lives.

A lot of lawyers are funsuckers (well, actually, only the ones who run around suing everybody into submission and lining their pockets by stopping anything that looks like fun). And the corporate weenies who chicken out and knuckle under to the lawyers are funsuckers. Remember all the dangerous stuff you did when you were a kid? Your kids can't do any of it. Everything has warning labels and safety straps and security guards to make sure they don't. The funsuckers have done their job.

People who smother their children in rigidly-scheduled programming, who freak out at anything their kids might like, who demand zero-tolerance policies for every eventuality, who won't let their kids get dirty or loud, are funsuckers.

The problem with America is that it's been taken over by funsuckers. Kids want to play baseball or soccer, and their funsucking parents turn it into a battle-to-the-death competition, screaming at the coaches and referees. Little girls want to dress up and be pretty, and so their parents either put them in beauty pageants or teach them all about the evils of "lookism." Funsuckers.

Funsuckers took away Quick-Draw McGraw's pistol. They bowdlerized the Road-Runner and Coyote. The world is overrun by them.

If you lecture your kids about violence when they ask if they can have Yu-Gi-Oh cards, you're a funsucker.

If your religion is primarliy defined by all the things you're not allowed to do, instead of the joy of getting closer to God, you may be in danger of turning into a funsucker.

If you worry and fret about things that almost never happen in real life, you may be a funsucker.

Let's talk about Halloween.

There is not one recorded case of anybody deliberately handing out poisoned candy to trick-or-treaters. Nearly every case in history of a kid getting a needle in a candy bar or drugs in their Pixy Stix has turned out to be either a hoax or an attack on a particular kid by a member of his own family.

Look it up. It doesn't happen. The odds of your kid having something bad happen to him or her on Halloween are even lower than your chances of winning the lottery. There are fewer child abductions and assaults now than there were when you were a kid, and your kids are a lot more aware of safety than you were at their age. Fact is, the damn news media plays up these stories to boost ratings. They scare the crap out of parents. Well, guess what? You aren't doing your kids any favors if you're protecting them from all the things you're afraid of. Stop projecting your fears onto their playtime. You're scaring your kids, and you're scaring yourself. You're being a funsucker. Knock it off.

Go to your bookstore or to Amazon or to the local library and get a book by Gerard Jones entitled Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence.   He makes a very compelling case: Kids NEED scary make-believe violence. They need super-heroes and monsters and boogeymen. These fantasy images in all their violence and horror equip children to be calm and in control when facing real frights.

Your "no gunplay, no violence" rules are harming your kids, turning them into fragile little hothouse flowers who can't cope with reality. By trying to create a non-scary environment for them, you are making them more nervous, more fearful and less able to deal with their own emotions.

"But I don't want them to play with guns; it's just teaching them to be violent. Real guns hurt people, and I don't want them to think that hurting people is okay."   What you're really saying here is that you can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy, that your kid's imagination scares you, and that instead of telling them that their fantasies are harmless and under their control, you're telling them that their fantasies are able to overpower and destroy both them and you. Is that really what you wanted to tell your kid?

Did you play with guns when you were a kid? Are you violent? Let them have some fun already.

If your kid is old enough to cross the street by himself and has a few friends to go out with, send them out to trick-or-treat this year. Don't take them out; send them out. It's an adventure. It's good for them. It's good for you. Stop being such a worry-wart. Don't turn into a funsucker.

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