I just got an email from another mom. One of those forwards that urges me to “be careful.” It includes several stories about children who played in ball pits at Chuck E. Cheese, McDonald’s, and other play areas. The children suffered bizarre symptoms after playing in the pits and then they died, after which it was discovered that under the balls lurked hypodermic needles full of heroin, copperhead snake nests, vomit, feces, and other such horrors. The writer of the original email of course swore that she’d never let her children play in a ball pit again, etc. etc.
Come on, people.
Do I need more horror in my day than I already have? Fire rains from the sky in the Middle East. Homeless people creep along the streets in 110-degree Los Angeles, seemingly dying right before my very eyes. Gas costs a trillionty dollars per gallon while Iran makes 40 billion dollars profit from sales of oil. Now I have to worry about the ball pits that already harbor enough festering germs to start an epidemic? I mean, I’m already turned off the ball pit idea, but this is getting ridiculous.
Update: I checked this out on snopes.com – you can see if these emails are true or false. Snopes says that all of the stories are in fact false, however: “Though the tragedy described in “Lauren Archer’s” e-mail is fictional, the danger of a tot coming into contact with a discarded syringe in one of those play nests is surprisingly real. Ball pit play areas aren’t always kept in the best condition. Before letting your child loose in one, make sure the play area’s maintenance staff spot cleans the pit once a day and washes all the balls every week. Diapers come off in ball pits, and half-eaten candy is routinely found in there. More disturbingly, syringes and knives have turned up in ball pits. “
In other news, I posted WWC photos below. It seems Oddy Oddmix is still recovering from his birthday celebration, so there isn’t a place for me to bellow I PLAYED! If you happen upon my site here, scroll down. I’m proud of those photos.
Yikes! That’s a scary story! On the brigher side, I LOVE the pictures of Kyle! He is getting so BIG!
OK, I am up now – proceed to the bellowing.
Your pride in your shots is justified – they are very nice.
And I HATE restaurant play areas. I am not fond of play areas in general, but ones in eating establishments are particularly bad. Chuck E. Cheese is like the fourth level of purgatory.
I too have never been a big fan of the “ball pit” no matter where it is located and I’m sure that’s why every child I know graviates to them.
I agree with you though about not needing another thing to worry about in this world. There is already so much crap going on in the world at large not to mention our very own country. I say let’s concentrate of what’s really important.
Hello, I’m from Graymama’s blog. You asked about the swap. No you didn’t miss anything. See I was bored one day last month (June) and put out a call for someone who would be interested in swapping with me. Graymama took the bait and I set up the terms, very simple. And we made a bunch of goodies (sewn, crafted etc) bought a bunch of goodies from dollar store, wrapped it all up and stuck it in a box and then mailed it off to eachother. Then we take pics of what we got , blog it and voila! Done. Would you like to try it??
That’s great. Let’s just scare you more than you already are being the Mom of a lil one. Geesh!
Those stupid email forwards annoy me to the nth degree. I always wrestle with sending the person a note back asking how they could be so clueless…I usually don’t.
My MIL sends me every one of those stupid “alert” chain emails that is flying around the Internet. Drives me nuts. You’re right…there’s enough real crazy shit going on in the world for me to want to read a fake email about copperhead snake nests in the ball crawl!