THE CHOKING GAME

My daughter sure does know how to make my heart drop in my chest like a rock. Last night, she casually asked me, "Do you know what the Choking Game is?"

I looked her in the eye and said, "No, I don't", as the fear of what it was started bouncing around this noggin' of mine. "What is it?" was all I could manage to ask, not wanting to know if it was what I thought it was.

It's worse.

My daughter told me that a kid will ask you if you want to play the choking game. If you say yes, then the person who asked will place his hands around your neck, and squeeze, blocking your windpipe, and he won't let go until you pass out. Then...when you wake up, it's supposed to be a huge rush, and you get all weird and drunk-like.

I asked her if kids actually did this in her school. She said yes, and that she was asked that very day in her chorus class if she wanted to play. Thank God she said no, and told the others she didn't want to because it was too dangerous. My daughter has a good head on her shoulders, and I pray peer pressure won't make her wisdom turn into foolishness. It only takes a second to lose your life, or be seriously injured playing anything.

Apparently, the Chorus Teacher heard the conversation, or someone told him, and he made the Principal aware this was going on. There had also been a child injured fairly seriously because of this game, only at the time, no one knew how he had been injured. Now they know.

This post isn't a fun post, it isn't a thoughtful post, or a post about God.

It's a post about something you might never have heard of, but it's something, apparently, that many children are doing. The choking game is only "fun", my daughter was told, because of the rush you get when you wake up from passing out. From sniffing, to drugs, to Ecstacy (yes, another drug, but one often administered without the recipients knowledge), our kids are crying out.

I wanted you to be aware that this game might be something your child is familiar with. Worse still, you know how kids can get. If a person says no, what's to stop a group of kids from pinning that child down and doing it anyway? That is often how kids, and sadly, adults are.

Now I suppose we could do the normal "Christian" thing to do, and write to our schools, and get all self-righteousy and stuff. But see, we've tried that before, and it never works. Raising an alarm such as this doesn't work if it is only going to be followed by silliness, and frankly, circling the wagons, pulling our kids out of school, and shaking our self-righteous finger at the "heathens" are all things I call silliness.

I said our kids are crying out. They seek the same things we seek, only it seems like now it's at a much earlier age. They seek experiences, and fun, joy and wholeness of life. They reach these things so much easier than we do, and become bored by the same old methods, sometimes quite rapidly. What does it say about us, supposed followers of Christ and our nation, when our kids are playing games like this? I suppose the natural thing to assume is that our kids won't play it, or aren't involved or affected by it. But that's really just a bunch of BS.

Another natural thing to do is to point the finger at the "godless heathens". Sorry, this is something everyone has a share in, blame and all. You cannot condemn a society without condemning yourself, because you live in that society.

That's why I don't want people like Focus on the Family or other religious windbags circling the wagons, telling us to homeschool our children to avoid the pitfalls of the world. If that kind of thing actually worked, people wouldn't be able to point at Christians and say, "You are the reason we don't want to believe".

So, now you know. This game is deadly. One child has already been badly injured in our town, and I haven't even had time to check if there are any other reports of this game nearby or far away. Our children are crying out, and maybe it's time we figured out why. Maybe it's something WE are doing.