There’s a reservoir around here that’s got a great hill for sledding. I know I’ve gone there (back when I was still young enough to trudge up a steep hill in the snow dragging a toboggan). It was cool, because it has kind of a two-level hill – a really steep upper part that levels out briefly, and then turns into a really steep and much longer lower part.

Over the years, kids have gotten hurt, since even if you don’t wipe out somewhere along the way, you have the potential to reach the road going at a pretty good clip. A while back, they put a fence around the upper hill, and put huge “NO SLEDDING” signs all the way around it. Naturally, this didn’t stop anybody, but I guess it helped with the City’s liability insurance.

This weekend, a 12-yr old girl managed to slam head first into a parked car, prompting cries of outrage for the City to “do something” about that hill. Sadly, she died last night.

Now, they’re scrambling to put up some of that orange plastic snow fence about 1/3 of the way up the hill (and at another, similar, reservoir in the City), which they say will come down in the spring and go back up in the fall (it’s a rather huge area, so even that plastic stuff will cost a bundle). Now, it’s very sad that this poor kid died, don’t get me wrong. But this is Syracuse, and it’s winter, and sledding is something fun for kids to do. Is it dangerous? Potentially. Care is certainly advised (for instance, try not to aim for the road). But it’s a dangerous world out there, and in the scheme of things, sliding down a hill isn’t the worst thing in the world. Something like 40-50 thousand people die in car accidents every year. Sonny Bono slammed his face into a tree while skiing. People drown, fall off of (and into) things, crash in airplanes, and die from all sorts of things. Hell, a block of toilet water ice can fall off an airplane and smack you in the head (it happened in Six Feet Under, anyway).

I mean, do we outlaw every potentially dangerous activity in the world, never leaving the house unless we’re wearing chain mail suits, inside portable shark cages? Kids (and adults) are gonna do some dumb things. They’ll get hurt, and some will die. It’s always sad when it happens, but that’s the nature of life on this planet. Nobody gets out alive. There’s no point in going out of our way to get ourselves killed, but while we’re here, we can either live our lives the way we’d like to, or cower in fear at the possibility that something horrible is about to happen.

If we want to expend time, energy, outrage, and, yes, money over something, why not put some effort into ending poverty, starvation, and war? Why not stop poisoning our air and water (and maybe quit shooting wolves from helicopters)?

Or isn’t there enough money in that?