It’s The Great Pumpkin Panic, Charlie Brown!

As I wrote on The Free Press yesterday, we are in the midst of a Pumpkin Panic. In East Texas, a 4-month-old girl participated in her day care’s “seasonal activity” of putting pumpkin guts in a plastic bag. The next day, she started vomiting, and by noon, she was admitted to the hospital. She had a very rough time of it, but thankfully recovered and is fine. Her mom took to social media to tell others. She wasn’t fearmongering, just shocked. But pretty soon, salmonella fears were spreading like a fecal-orally transmitted infectious disease. Then came the calls to ban pumpkin-carving for kids. Because that’s how this culture rolls. I still haven’t figured out exactly why — fear of blame, litigation, or eternal regret — but we now treat extremely rare, even one-in-340,000,000 events as if they are crucial to parental decision making. And on Halloween, we turn that up to 11. It’s like we get that the holiday is about being scared, but forget that that it’s the KIDS who are supposed to be…