CIVIL LIBERTY and OTHER DEGRADED THINGS

i learned, very young, that if i jumped from a high enough point onto hard ground i would hurt myself. there are many people who practise a sport known as "tricking", which is essentially the art of jumping, falling, climbing, and otherwise flipping from and to hard ground, metal bars, solid walls, dodgy stairs and in general taking some pretty serious risks. sometimes serious falls, too, but then it's their own fault and they have to deal with the consequences.

tough.

we're very good at that sort of thing - finding exhiliarating ways in which to endanger our lives and pull through, survive, and otherwise feel good about ourselves and the world we live in, where we are challenged in various ways and we are given opportunities to overcome those challenges.

what i'm ranting about is nothing that extreme. i was skateboarding since i was about the size of a board, and rollerblading since my teenage years (a lot longer ago than i'm comfortable with). i'm not even on the same playing field as the professionals, i don't really do any tricks, but i'm more comfortable on wheels than i am in a pair of shoes and i've never really had any trouble negotiating bad roads (and we who pay our taxes still suffer plenty of those) and traffic. unless, of course, i've been deliberately doing something stupid.

nobody has made a pedestrian falling over illegal.
no, wait, nobody has ever made pedestrians potentially falling over, without protection, illegal. i've just received a formal warning by a couple of beer-bellied, close-to-pension policemen (traffic wardens? i can't tell the difference in this country) for rollerblading without a helmet.

i consider this a robbery of civil liberties. for me, putting on my blades is the same as going for a run, and i'm certainly not going to put on a helmet to do that. in fact, i'm fairly confident that if anybody proposed a law mandating that all joggers wear helmets in the event that they cross a road at some point in their run they'd be made a laughing stock, because that would be stupid.

however, cyclists are required by law to wear protection, so now rollerbladers and even skateboarders are as well.

i love how the legal system manages to get everything backwards. instead of protecting the pedestrian and somewhat mobile population from bad drivers by preventing said drivers from getting behind the wheel, they leave them be and ruin the fun for the rest of us.
some of the responses i've received from boys in blue-ish over the years have been positively inspiring, like this gem:
"if the driver of a car runs over a rollerblader it's automatically his fault, so it's not fair of you to be in the way."
maybe, now i'm just stabbing in the dark with this one - maybe in a case like that somebody should try to verify who's to blame?
naaah. too much policework. and we wouldn't want them actually working, now would we?
oh, that's right. they're overworked. with real issues. then deal with those instead, you fat bastards.

and by fat bastards i'm referring to lawmakers as well as those paying them any more attention than they deserve.

in the united states the motto is "protect and serve", and although that's the gist of the western world's attitude towards policing (as it should be, that is) if they continue to make us uncomfortable "for our own good", when i have the right to make mistakes and pay for them, we're headed down a dark path where it simply won't be worth it for anyone to even try to be lawful. i could've picked any of a number of stupid laws to base this statement off of, but obviously it's now personal.

and this is coming from me, an idiot so upholding of the law that his friends are concerned when he stops for a red light and there's no one about... when on foot, in the middle of the night. i don't litter, i don't vandalize, i don't hurt anyone, i drive defensively and carefully, and i serve my country to the best of my ability (i'm a professional soldier).

i don't own a helmet, and i don't agree with this law. at the very least, the idiot who approved this bill should send me the required protection. however, i know how stupid and unfair our legal system is, and how little my voice is, so i'm going to resort to buying the ugliest helmet i can find, maybe even go so far as a crash-helmet, and i'm going to dress it up with a police siren and maybe a bicycle bell to warn whoever i approach at such dangerously high speeds.

maybe i should wear full body armour. maybe riot gear. in fact, i'm considering selling my blades, buying a television set and staying at home glued to it instead. because out there it's just not safe anymore.