Stop, Drop, and Roll

There are many milestones on the path to adulthood: turning 18, graduating from school, landing that first job, having a baby.  There are also less tangible markers of adulthood such as a shift in our perception of threats.  Saturday morning cartoons implied that quicksand would be a real and ever-present obstacle to daily life.  School assemblies left us wondering just how often we’d be catching fire.  Hollywood warned us about the Commie Reds invading our neighborhoods and training montages.  All of these threats were overblown.  Quicksand and catching on fire are extremely remote issues.  As we all know, Head of the Class planted the seeds of the Soviet Union’s destruction when they traveled to Moscow in 1988.  The USSR only lasted 6 months after the last episode of America’s favorite classroom comedy in 1991.

Adult Problems

Now that we’re older, we worry about adult things like jobs and babies.  One item you can demote on your adult worry list is CNBC’s “Markets in Turmoil”: