Danger!

Do you know what will kill your child? 

Turns out, the answer is "just about everything".  

I get that there are things that you need to be careful about, like making sure there are no pots of boiling oil on your stove or bent paper clips loitering near outlets, but I can hardly believe that my brother, sister and I all made it to adulthood without being dead.

And no, I'm not just going to write about all the "hey, we could go for car rides sleeping in the back window of the car" or "remember when we hardly ever stabbed anyone to death with lawn darts" kind of stuff.  I'm talking about the change in your head that happens when you are suddenly responsible for a living thing that seems, at times, to be actively trying to cause serious injury to themselves.

I'm sitting in the kitchen right now, which you may be aware is the most dangerous room in the house (next to the bathroom, living room, bedrooms, hallways, stairs, basement, attic, crawlspaces, closets, garage...).  Here's the run down of how our kitchen is going to kill our child.

• Magnets on the fridge: choking hazard
• Frying pan with spatula sitting on front burner with handle turned to the outside: falling object hazard
• Pile of cutlery in a bowl on counter: falling object hazard + stabbing
• Unsecured cupboard doors: so many poisons
• Open stairs: No child gate = falling hazard

And that was all without even trying.  Imagine what I'll come up with more time on my hands?

So let's talk about vaccinations.

Get your child vaccinated.  I am going to use calm, soothing words here to say that vaccinating your child against disease is the smartest, easiest and best way to protect your child.  As I said earlier, there are so many things trying to kill your child that you can see.  Now just think about all the things trying to kill your child that you can't see.  

Moving the fridge magnets isn't going to protect your child from catching whooping cough.

Securing the cupboard doors won't keep polio out.

A baby gate might keep your child from tumbling down the stairs, but diphtheria can be spread through the air.  

It amazes me that people of sound mind could say no to this.  

But I know that there are people that say vaccines are bad, and some of them are quite vehement about it.  I've even met a few that I could do nought but shake my head in wonder as they proudly proclaimed that they were not giving their little bundle of joy any needles.  

I may even receive some email or comments about this post.  I'm not even going to say that I'm taking a position on this, because that would be an awful lot like saying that I'm choosing to believe in physics and thermodynamics and choose not to throw a pot of boiling oil straight up in the air above me.

Send all the commentary and emails you like, just keep your child away from mine.  

Here's my plan.  We find a semi-famous celebrity who has some moderate sex appeal to start making wild claims like "my child didn't get vaccinated and they got sick!" or "there is a direct link to my child's Hepatitis B infection and the fact that they never got a vaccination for it!"  Get them on some talk shows, start generating some buzz around it, maybe get them to publish a book or two.

Thank god there was never a swimsuit competition requirement for Jonas Salk to publish his findings.