Hazard-spotting cont.

My continued shock at our overly-safety-conscious society continued today at a new playgroup (very nice playgroup, lovely church hall, promising looking bunch of people at it, very friendly). I was in the middle of what I thought was a nice conversation with a girl about her baby, where she lived, did she work and a general get-to-know-you chat when her nine-month old baby sent a wheeled toy whizzing across the floor to another part of the room.

We were sitting in a large room full of toys, babies and toddlers. There was stuff everywhere. And then, after watching this toy roll off, and in the middle of her sentence, she jumped up with a cry of "Oooh, trip hazard," and scuttled over to retrieve the toy from about eight feet away.

"Trip hazard" - what??????

When she came back, I was tempted to ask her if she thought that by leaving her baby for five seconds on a wooden floor, she had not been risking a "bump hazard" or "potential cranial trauma incident (P.C.T.I)"? What if her baby had accidentally fallen over while she had been away for the shocking length of time of about 20 seconds (which obviously means that she is a lax parent because she was not attending to her child for every second of the day). But I didn't. Don't want everyone thinking I am a freak!

I will have to watch my tongue. I really enjoyed the playgroup today, and met a couple of genuinely nice, normal, sensible, fun and interesting looking girls around my age which is great. But if anyone else starts wittering on about bloody ridiculous safety issues to me, I will be unable to maintain my shy and polite silence and put them in their place. And then live with the consequences as I am ostracised as a weird witch for holding such subversive views.