Where A Kid Can't Be A Kid

Fact: over 40% of America's children are overweight and inching uncomfortably close to the borderline of morbid obesity.

Fact: More kids nowadays would rather sit inside with a pack of Oreos and play Call of Duty for four hours straight than shoot some hoops with friends on their driveway.

Fact: Technology is advancing faster than these little tykes even have time to fathom what it's turning them into: video game loving, aerobic activity despising anti-social weirdos who squint at the first site of sun in summertime because they haven't SEEN it in so God damn long.

Still, I don't think we should carry restrictions of pleasure over to vending machines in middle school cafeterias. I was totally horrified today when I meandered up to one such vending machine at my little sister's winter concert and found VEGGIE STIX as one of my options. Veggie Stix?! Really, guys?!

There was not a single solitary snack encased in that pathetic excuse for a "vending machine" that contained anything I like - more specifically, no chocolate, no peanut buttter and no high content of saturated fat. It felt so wrong just to peer inside.

This goes out to all parents and teachers and nutritional educators of the world: cookies and cakes have been around for centuries - video games have not. So, conclusion: take the physical health of your OWN obese child into your OWN hands and sign them up for intramural volleyball. Cuz guess what? That varsity athlete who runs 6 miles a day and has abs of steel deserves that pack of Oreo's after practice which SHOULD be waiting for him in his high school's vending machine - and you health freaks have no right to take it away from him!