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Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008
When the calendar flips to September, parents of school-aged children are reminded that the greatest pleasure of parenthood is taking your kids to a building far from your house and leaving them there for many, many hours. The next biggest perk of having young children is that you get to sleep in until 5:27 a.m. on Saturdays. Yet when I dropped my four-year-old daughter at her school one recent morning, I felt dread instead of joy. I wasn’t concerned for my daughter, who is enjoying kindergarten thoroughly. (She has made many new friends, her teacher is nice, and the glue at school, she tells me, is equally delicious as the glue at home.) What disturbed me, terrified me really, was the school’s playground. It was teeming with children. Swinging on swings, sliding down slides, monkey-barring across monkey bars -- so many kids! And that’s when it hit me: Our country is suffering from an unprecedented childhood epidemic. It’s tempting to pretend otherwise but, truth be told, there are hundreds of thousands of Canadians still in their childhoods. These people are not to be confused with childish adults. Children eat lots of junk food, throw lots of tantrums and watch lots of cartoons. Childish adults eat lots of junk food, throw lots of tantrums and work in the House of Commons. You might think it’s no big deal that Canada has so many children. (Wrong.) You might even think it’s a good thing. (Super wrong.) Perhaps you also think the writer of this column is rambling on and on without making a point because he gets paid by the word. (No comment.) I do have a point, thank you very much, and it’s this: Children are destroying our country (except for my two children, who are content merely to destroy my living room and any electronics no longer under warranty). Consider the Grand Canyon-sized dent children make in our food supply. The average Canadian adult female consumes 2000 calories per day, and the average Canadian adult male consumes 4500 calories per triple bacon cheeseburger. And we need those calories, every last one. Food scientists claim that Canadians require high-calorie diets to maintain the layer of fat that allows us to survive the trip from our front doors to our cars during winter. This is testament not only to the harshness of our climate, but is further evidence that people who study food science aren’t smart enough to study real science. Most of the much-needed calories adults consume come from sugar. Problem is, we’re running out. And who’s to blame? Oh, I don’t know … could it be all those hyperactive half-pints who down candies by the pound, guzzle soda by the gallon and only eat fruit that come flat and rolled up? I speak of children, of course, who consume 814 per cent of the country’s sugar. This might seem implausible or even mathematically impossible, which just goes to prove that, as many have long suspected, I am terrible at math. The childhood epidemic is also laying waste to our educational system. Elementary school teachers often complain of being overworked and exhausted, and no wonder. It would take superhuman stamina to tolerate all those children, who tirelessly run and scream and fight and ask dumb questions: What comes after "T?" Where is China? Why did that kid’s face get so big after I gave him some peanuts? Imagine how productive teachers would be if there were no children. No more marking papers. No more preparing lessons. No more teaching. And imagine the savings. Teachers would have time not only to master solitaire, but also to do all the janitorial work. Children also clog our hospitals, dominate our beaches and pee in our swimming pools. That’s not to say children are completely void of value. They look cute on family Christmas cards and help keep sidewalks clean by eating discarded gum. But compared to Asian children, who make 93 per cent of the world’s running shoes, Canadian tykes just don’t measure up. Unfortunately, this problem has no simple solution. As long as adults continue to have sex, children will continue to plague our country. And the sad irony is, the only adults too tired to have sex are those with children. But if we don’t solve this problem now, before it gets completely out of hand, we will be left with only one option: We will have to solve it later. That might prove difficult because, depending on the day, we may be busy then. |