Buckle Up to Slim Down...

Happy Birthday, Seatbelts..! Well, not your real birthday, but the 25th Anniversary of when it became LAW to wear seatbelts--you know--when people actually started to use you so as not to be thrown missile-like through the windshield.

Knowing the threat didn't seem to work. Americans needed the whole "Buckle Up for Safety" campaign to convince us... And New York was the first state to make it law. Today, only New Hampshire finds the policy offensive to its "Live Free or Die" motto. No matter buckling up has averted incalculable human suffering and saves $3 Billion annually in costs associated with auto-related injuries and deaths that never have to be paid.

I have to confess I wasn't big on wearing seatbelts. My parents never buckled up my brothers and me--all the better for us to freely knock each other senseless on every roadtrip. And once I could drive that red hot Dodge 400 Convertible on my own, well, seatbelts would be waaaay too uncool. That is until not wearing a seatbelt crushed 14 bones in my little brother's gorgeous face, destroyed his lip, and stole many of his pearly whites--I mean perfectly straight teeth without the aid of braces--and not a filling among them. His wreck was 20 years ago, and I've buckled up ever since.

Funny how well seatbelts work when you use them. It's kinda like eating right and exercising daily. How many times do I have to hear intelligent people with PhDs lecture or write about the poor obese souls who, try as they might, "eating right and exercising daily just doesn't work for them..."

What??

Oooooh, what you really mean is that doing those things didn't work because people didn't do them. Ya know, the data on unbuckled seatbelts isn't all that stellar either.

Yeah, I get it, it's easier to fasten a seatbelt than to eat properly and exercise everyday...

But come on people, buckle up and buckle down. It's your life and your kids in the backseat.

As for my brother, he's still super-gorgeous--and single. And he better be wearing his seatbelt.