By Monte Tucker
Howdy friends and neighbors. I like mud! We’ll talk to you next week! That’s it for this week’s column! Ha, no, you know me; I couldn’t leave it with just that.
Oh man have you seen the latest on child safety that congress is about to come up with? Here’s the latest made up story I came up with. At the high school basketball playoffs the other night during an intense girl’s game between Sayre and Mangum, I had to make my may to the concession stand for some popcorn and a cold Dr. Pepper. That’s when I saw my good friend and his daughter come into the gym. And, as many fathers do, he had his little girl up on his shoulders giving her a traditional “piggy back ride.” That’s when it hit me and Sayre hit a three!
I can just imagine what would happen if a bunch of “do-gooder,” knot-headed liberal politicians witnessed what I just observed. I’m positive they would run as fast as a camera could follow, jump on a private carbon-belching jet airplane and zoom into DC to start writing up all sorts of new “child safety laws” that pertain to traditional piggy back rides. The first paragraph would, well, it would contain some language that gives a huge campaign contributor a grant for bamboo as a “green” alternative to aluminum for safety rails. But the next chapter would contain the language that gives birth to a new governmental agency that would regulate and oversee licensing and permitting for piggy back rides.
Some of the first new rules this agency would issue include: in order for a parent or grandparent of said child to host a piggy back ride they must first install a safety rail for which the said child could easily latch his or her approved and permitted safety harness to. Next, the website http://secondalternativetosafetyharnesspiggyback.gov/rail/osha/asap.gov.not would be made available for parents to navigate through endless, meaningless notifications to an icon the size of a speck of dust on your smart phone screen in order to obtain the proper requirements that contradict requirements the state agency issues along with the proper permits to install permanent railing and catwalks for continuous piggy back rides.
Oh, and of course we need rules in place that exclude parents that are over 6’6” from piggy back rides unless they pass a written and practical test in order to obtain the correct endorsements on their piggy back permits.
I can just see the media flocking to the latest analysts, field experts and controversial extremist groups that staged an all out protest at the Herman family reunion where an un-licensed and un-permitted uncle of a 4-year-old boy attempted a two-handed, manmade centrifuge in which the boy’s feet left contact with the ground for more than 3 seconds! Then the vegetarian and SOS (Save our Sod) groups got upset with the incident because the uncle wasn’t using proper, non-invasive methods while spinning in the same spot damaging the helpless grass beneath his feet.
But in order to get the bi-partisan support needed to pass this new bill out of the Senate, the Republicans would be allowed to insert language that allows for tax credits to employers who install these safety rails and catwalks on employees’ backs and provide fall prevention training to managers before chewing on or riding an employee’s butt for an extended period of time.
I’m Monte Tucker and that is what’s under my “Safety First” hat!