America is not Serious…
Byhttp://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/kids/news/story/0,28277,1057681,00.html
I was so encouraged when I heard that Gov Huckabee and President Clinton were joining forces to combat childhood obesity, because it’s only through dedicated people that the fight can be won. But are we really trying to win a fight? Actually, are we even fighting? Sure, Gov Huckabee and President Clinton are, but what about the rest of us? Are we really fighting? Because in light of an epidemic, what we’re doing as a country to combat obesity is like fighting a lion with a toothpick. America is not serious.
When a boxer prepares for an upcoming fight, he studies his opponent, so that when they get in the ring, he knows what to expect. I’m not sure we truly understand the size of the opponent, no pun intended. We can spit out facts and figures about the onslaught of this tragedy, but what good is it to identify the height and reach of our opponent if we do nothing to block the blow? America is not serious.
And even more troubling, obesity, despite being as evident as this morning’s sunrise, is as invisible as time. Oh, we see the effects of time upon the earth and each other, but time itself is untraceable. Obesity is the same way. It’s a gradual occurrence. Kids don’t just walk in the house one day morbidly obese. No, it’s a slow fade. And speaking of time, obesity will make sure that kids have less of it, since the kids born today will be the first generation in history to not outlive their parents. America is not serious.
The other day I was driving home and I saw a couple of kids throwing the football in the street. Let me ask you, when was the last time you saw that? Can you recall the last time you saw a street game of ball? As kids, when we found a nice park or clearing, our first thought was, “man, if I only had a football”. but it’s not that kids don’t like the game of football, its just, they don’t even notice the grass. America is not serious.
You might as well be talking Yiddish when you ask kids to go play outside. But the look you get from kids is not confusion, it’s borderline disbelief. “Yeah right!”; as if you’ve just asked them to walk into a burning building. Quite the contrary, when you send them outside, you’re getting them out of one. America is not serious.
More to come….but send me your thoughts and better yet, let’s begin to create real solutions. I’ll start: Let’s set timers on video games and computers. When the time is up, kids go outside to play. Sounds too easy, right? Yeah, if the solution is so easy, what does that mean?
Pena
1 Comments
February 26th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
To be honest, this growing epidemic is part of the reason that I try to keep in shape and that I’m so insistent upon making time for workouts. Not for me, so much, but for my daughters. I think I owe it to them to have the energy and fitness level to play with them OUTSIDE for years to come! I don’t just mean sitting in my lawn chair and throwing a ball out there to watch them (although I’ll probably do that too!), but actually running around with them, getting mud on my clothes and sweating up shirts. Because that’s how they’ll grow to love physical activity. I’m at the computer all day, wishing I could be outside playing some street ball, JP! I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, and it starts with my kids.