As Easter approaches...

Here's a sad story right off the Google:

COLORADO SPRINGS - The annual Old Colorado City Easter Egg Hunt has been canceled because organizers say parents were getting too aggressive.Organizer Dave VanNess said the event has been held for a decade, but it has grown so big and parents were getting so aggressive he cancelled it.

VanNess said the event was creating more hard feelings instead of the fun they've always intended.

According to KKTV-TV, parents were supposed to stay behind a rope, but many broke that rule making things overcrowded and chaotic.

Parents?  What's up??  Are you all so hyperinvolved with your progeny that you can't stand behind a rope line and watch them cavort happily for Easter eggs?  Must you helicopter over them 24-7-366 (Leap Year!) to snoopervise every aspect of their lives?  Is there nothing that can be left to the childrens' devices?

When I was in 9th grade, two rumors swept the student population at dear old Towsontown Junior High. One was that an aspirin tablet dropped into a Coca-Cola would induce such an aphrodisiac effect on an unwitting female as to make any member of that gender "ours" at any party, dance or supermarket opening.  The other one turned out to be untrue as well; it claimed that on a certain Friday morning, Martians were coming to Earth to take all of us young people back to their far-off planet and allow us to grow up in peace.  That never happened, and it's just as well: many of us planned to give Martian women coke 'n' aspirin cocktails to see if we could get intergalactically lucky.  And you know that would have turned out not so well.

But the idea of the second rumor has some validity to those who see how some people act around their kids. Many friends have told me that parents can be insufferable at Little League or rec soccer games.  They hurl both epithets and drink containers at the umpire or referee, they belittle their own children, they howl at a decision that goes against "them," and they have been known to attack physically opponent children and parents.

And that's all in the name of modeling good behavior as they raise little Bud or Sis.

So, let's try to make 2012 The Year That Parents Let Kids Be Kids, and maybe Old Colorado City can have their Easter egg hunt again in 2013.