Premiere Entry: Let's get the compulsory bitching out of the way up front

"Don't sweat the small stuff," calls the novelty mug in a brushy 1980s font. A chorus of schwag chants this platitude from dump tables and thrift stores in every English speaking community on this planet we call Earth. I would venture to guess that somewhere there is a picture of LOLcats mewing "Don't sweat the small stuff," to each other from ground level, peering up along the legs of a new frilly bassinet.

I smash that coffee cup in the fireplace with a hearty Opa! I dress those LOLcats in layettes and bonnets and leave Sweet Pea on the floor to crawl through the steel girders and cement mixers just beyond the open door.
I reject your reality and substitute my own: "If you cannot trust that someone will do the right thing when it is easy to do, you cannot expect that they will do the right thing when it is more difficult to do."

Here's an easy example: school zone speed limits.

My hometown has one main drag through downtown. Three schools and the library are clustered along this main drag well away from the downtown area. The speed limit is 35, 20 in the school zones. Twenty. In the school zones. On school days. When the orange hazard light is flashing. When children are present. Our children. I am the only one who even approaches 20. Ever. Not the parents, not the school buses, not the police on their way to and from their speed trap set up to catch speeders in the school zone.

To be sure, I am a fairly law-and-order fuddy-duddy for an extreme lefty -- but I am no prude. Still, if I can't trust my neighbors to slow down and follow the rules long enough to be certain they are not plowing over their own children and their children's classmates, then I can't trust my neighbors when the sleeper cell of foreign operatives in Lake Station, IN accidentally gets switched on by a David Blaine trick gone wrong on TV. Sure, I wouldn't mind a series of payday-loan shops meeting with a few pounds of C-4, but not if the debris field is directly over the jungle gym at the park.

I think back to being fifteen years old and failing the driving portion of Driver's Ed. because my spinning alcoholic of a driver's-ed. teacher couldn't regain his equilibrium enough to tell that I came to a complete stop at the red octagon. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. When I learned how to drive, we were required to come to a complete stop at a red octagon no matter what. No matter what. No matter what. Then, once we had come to a complete stop at the red octagon, we had to count out-loud "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi" before we were even to look and see if it was clear to lurch forward into the intersection. In nineteen eighty duhba-duhba-duhba I aced the classroom portion of Driver's Ed., but failed the practicum because I said Mississippi faster than the stammering drunk with the additional brake pedal. I had to retake the driving portion in summer school, and had no problems with the extra-sober elderly Dutch-Christian-Reformed spinster who instructed me then.

I resent the stranglehold of frivolous regulation as much as Rush Limbaugh and his Pez dispenser full of oxycontin. The old punk in me says, "Rules are for fools." Indeed, the old Puck of punk himself, Johnny Rotten, said it:

Rules are for fools...but common sense is for everyone.

If we are going to replace all of the red tape with clear tape -- or with no tape at all -- we have to make sure we don't run over our kids on the way to the candy store. Mix metaphors until stiff peaks form. Pour into a 9-by-13 cake pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Sweat the small stuff. The small stuff is everyday life. The small stuff is your friendships, your family relationships, your sense of belonging. The small stuff is the Social Contract.

Here endeth the bitching.

Next time, hi-jinx and poop jokes.