When I was six years old I slammed my ear into a park bench playing tag.

True story, ask my parents or my scar.

I was enjoying the free spirit of my youth and trying not to be "it" when a park bench interrupted my escape route leaving me with 11 stitches and a small amount of hearing loss in my right ear.

I never thought to sue the town for building the park, or the bench for getting in my way, and never would have dreamed of calling for a mutiny on the game of "tag," the reigning king of all recess games.

But school administrators across the country are banning tag at recess, citing possible injuries both to children and to the school's budget from settlement-hungry parents in a litigious society. Tag, this is it, and there are no tag-backs - ever again.

No more freeze tag, TV tag or any variation on the game of tag - the equipment-less, ball-less, boundary-less game of social interaction and development for young kids - at recess for schools in Spokane Wash.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Charleston, S.C.; and now Attleboro, Mass..

The game is banned in the latest round of the fight to wimpify the youth of our country. Our grandparents were raised to "walk to school uphill, both ways, in the snow," and our grandchildren will be raised to fear and avoid blacktop, and not to walk without parental supervision.

Administrators are calling tag "too rough" and saying that the game can lead to bruised bodies and egos; but without developmental games children won't have any experience losing and winning - being "it" and running circles around the competition.

We're not only stunting the fun at recess, but we're stunting our children's growth. I guess if we keep them hooked on video games the worst that could happen is carpal tunnel syndrome. But why are we halting innocent running and laughing - an endangered species of child's play - in the age of X-Box and exponential obesity?

Because we're more worried about direct, physical harm. We may want to bubble-boy our children at recess, but at the same time we're pumping Christina Aguilera and Eminem into their formative airwaves.

Long-term effects of obesity and no exercise by the no-tag generation seem like less of a cost to administrators than the immediate cash needed to fend off a lawsuit. So the tradeoff seems simple: They may end up fat and vulgar, but they never skinned their knees.

And in the process the magic word "recess" has been transformed from the highlight of any K-6 kid's day into "a time when accidents can happen," as one principal involved with the ban put it.

But life is a time when accidents can happen - anytime - and tag teaches that life isn't always fun and games. Sometimes it's falling flat on your face.

The fashion of the day, however, is a lawsuit. This is the society where a woman sued McDonald's because she spilled coffee on herself, where Edgar Snyder convinced us that accidents are the poor-man's lottery and where the belief is held that if something bad happens, someone, somewhere, should be writing a check.

And tag being banned to dodge lawsuits dresses us in a whole new level of pathetic where warning signs and cautiousness will imprison us and limit us like kids in a classroom, looking out the window longingly at the surface we used to call a playground.

When these kids leave the classroom and encounter real-world obstacles with more complicated solutions than "no automatic tag-backs," we'll expect them to be able to step up and face the challenge.

But how are they going to be able to stand up when we've never let them learn how to fall down? It's easy to find the problem: banning tag, you're it.