Indestructible

It's getting colder, eh.

I was going to say something about the happiness debate, because I just finished reading a book that touches on it, but I saw something today and changed my mind XD

So I was walking home from school today, and on the other side of the road there were three kids who were about 9 or 10 years old. One was skateboarding, one scooter-ing and the other.. didn't notice because as I watched, the scooter-ing kid fell flat on his face and sort of lay there for a while without moving.

Two things passed through my head at that moment:
1) The skate-boarding kid's laugh sounds freakishly like Juliet's (from Heavenly Creatures).
2) He's fine: *flashback*

It was during our year 8 camp, and it had been raining so much that our teachers let us off doing early morning runs. Consequently, the ground had turned into ankle deep mud.
Our group was going mountain biking that morning.

About 20 minutes into the course, we were cycling on the road. Then we had to take a downwards-sloping turn-off on the left, which was the start of a narrow dirt track. The track had a sharp right turn about five metres down the slope.

We let this guy go in front of us, and he took it too fast and smashed into a tree, because he couldn't turn in time. He fell off his bike and was just lying there, not moving, for a while.
So someone yelled for the teacher and everyone was just quietly thinking, is he okay, but we were worrying unnecessarily, because he soon stood up and got on his bike again.

As did the kid on the way home from school. 30 seconds after he'd fallen and the scene was exactly as it was before, complete with the Juliet-style laughter.

Anyway, the point is, maybe kids are a lot tougher than we give them credit for. And if that's the case, then the problem of parents coddling their children out of love (like Winnie said) is even worse than we think. We worry about them way too much. Conversely, don't we tend to not worry about parents and teachers etc.? Like Mrs L. said, people like to think that teachers shut themselves in a cupboard after hours and don't have lives outside school, but the fact is, they do, and they have problems like everybody else.

To oversimplify it, when you get older, people stop caring, because they expect you to look after yourself.
That's what growing up's all about, kids!
Ah, it's too cynical. And I'm not even in a cynical mood today.
Going to study.