If it had not already ocurred to you, almost-seven-year-olds are active and exhausting. Just playing with Sierra for half an hour at the park two nights ago made me sweaty and pooped. She refused to believe that I am too big to play on the kiddy jungle gym and as if to prove my point, when she had me go down the fire pole, I banged my head really hard on the overhead bar. It was very exciting, though, because she'd never gone down the fire pole herself and initially with some coaxing, I helped her and when her mother came to pick her up, she was able to show off her new trick and even did it all by herself.

When I was her age, I refused to go down the fire pole at my school's playground, but that was because it was twenty feet high and I had to lean way out to reach it. Playgrounds nowadays are pretty wimpy. They've reverted to what they were like in the 60s. My school had one of the first wood apparata in Toronto with three levels, a huge tube slide, two tire swings (I think they've since been banned because they're kind of dangerous - though I never remember anyone getting seriously hurt on one), and a whole plethora of other neat things. In this world of ever increasing desire to protect kids from the 'dangers' out there, playgrounds have returned to short open-air slides, canvas-seated swings (if you're lucky), fire poles that don't get higher than eight feet, and monkey bars that you'd have to be totally inept to fall out off. And I say that as a kid who took a MIGHTY fall from her school's monkey bars that required me to go to hospital.

Anyway, in the end, kids will still get hurt and over protective parents, school boards, and children's charity groups will freak out. If they could have their way, kids would all be put in sterile bubbles and rolled around on soft, grassy surfaces with no chance for interaction. I mean, come on, I managed to break my ankle at a baroque recorder practice. Children will always find a way to hurt themselves. Sure, maybe I'm saying this because I don't have kids and don't understand what a parent feels, but there is a level of over-protection that I hope I never reach. Touching the hot burner is part of growing up, folks.

Anyway, in other news, I went with Nick to the Democrats Abroad event last night at the Duke of York. The idea was that all the local Democrats were to get together to watch John Kerry's acceptance speach, only after two hours of talking, eating, drinking, and television watching, he still hadn't come on, so Nick and I left. Whatever. It was fun, even though I had to share the table with the Crabbiest ROM Volunteer ever. She's a condescending, irritating, self-righteous old woman who never has a pleasant word for the staff. Her husband was quite nice, however; if a little cowed.

Hanging out with Nick did provide me with one insight that I truly appreciate. We were talking about the US elections and how someone he knows is running as an independent Libertarian candidate and I mentioned that not a single self-proclaimed Libertarian that I knew was actually able to explain what a Libertarian is. I remarked that they're always trying to demonstrate themselves with that damnable quadrant diagram that is so facile an explanation that it says nothing at all about what a Libertarian actually believes in.

Nick's explanation is perfect for me, as a fairly literate individual: "A Libertarian is someone who's read too much Heinlein and is too timid to admit liking Ayn Rand." He further elaborated: "You know, they want to take a few 'good' people and colonise the moon, doing it the 'right' way from the beginning." Ahhh, Nick, finally a concept I understand.