If your goals center around straight and even arrangement of garden tools, hanging shovels and hoes and rakes in rows along the garage wall, making sure they’re all the same distance from the floor, waking up at night to check this height again and again with a pocket ruler you picked up at the hospitality hut near the Ohio line, and rearranging and re-hanging said tools if their spacing is found to be deficient, you will go about life unmolested. No one will care about your private activities and most will approve, if pressed. Society is structured to see you succeed in taming yard instruments.

This stuff has been voted on. We’re all in agreement. You have our blessing.

If, however, you’d prefer to give away swimming lessons for free, really truly for free, accepting nothing in return, not even complimentary pie tickets or gifts of hair service, you will be denied. Teaching a man to dive, to hold his breath, to flutter kick is a paid transaction. No deviation is allowed. We have decided water fun has a price. One we all pay.

Chris Weagel

Chris Weagel writes about the intersection of technology and parenting for Wired Magazine. No he doesn't. He can't stand that shit.

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