{"id":34,"date":"2005-06-26T14:05:20","date_gmt":"2005-06-26T19:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/2005\/06\/26\/were-poisoning-the-children\/"},"modified":"2007-06-04T14:08:47","modified_gmt":"2007-06-04T19:08:47","slug":"were-poisoning-the-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/2005\/06\/26\/were-poisoning-the-children\/","title":{"rendered":"We&#8217;re poisoning the children!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The other day I went for a relaxing bike ride for these reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It was a nice day and I felt like exploring the neighborhood.<\/li>\n<li>I just had the bike fixed and wanted to try it out.<\/li>\n<li>I needed to get out of the house for a while.<\/li>\n<li>I didn&#8217;t feel like doing the &#8220;work&#8221; I had scheduled for myself that weekend.<\/li>\n<li>Cross training. I was tired of running and wanted to get muddy!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With those stated reasons in mind I enjoyed a relaxing (and muddy) 12 mile trek through the woods, over bogs and along the shoulder of scenic Route 516. Just as I was returning to my abode I heard a strange electric whirring noise and looked up to see two kids (roughly 7 to 9 years old) riding what looked like a mini-motorcycle and a mini-go-cart. The go-cart kid saw me on my bike and loudly exclaimed &#8220;<strong>WE DON&#8217;T NEED EXERCISE!<\/strong>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s right the little chubby cherub (sorry kid, but you barely fit into the go-cart&#8230; really, you looked quite uncomfortable) didn&#8217;t need exercise because he had a go-cart. What frightens me about this isn&#8217;t that he decided to be mouthy, but that he saw me on my bike and did not see:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Someone out for a ride to get from point A to point B or<\/li>\n<li> Someone on a bike to enjoy the wind in his hair (or through my helmet; whatever) or<\/li>\n<li> Someone who was just out playing like they were&#8230;<em> no!<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><strong>He saw someone exercising! <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Children who perceive a bicycle covered in mud as nothing more than exercise are in for a long and tedious life. All of the media targetted at adults is seeping into the brains of our larvae. If it isn&#8217;t battery powered and &#8220;Zoom zoom zoom&#8221;, then it must be exercise which is work and no child will ever ride a bike or play tag again because &#8220;spinning&#8221; or &#8220;treadmilling&#8221; is for adults. Thanks Ballys. Thanks Curves. I&#8217;m  never having kids or, failing that, at least never going to let them watch commercials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do you get when you drum health-club commercials into the mushy brain of an impressionable youth (besides anorexic kids)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}