The parents of a County Durham schoolboy, who choked to death on a plastic pen top, are stepping up their campaign to get them banned.When our son was a baby, through a moment of parental inattention, he managed to get hold of the metal screw top from a bottle of apple juice and stick it into his mouth.
Ben Stirland, 13, from Consett, died in January, after swallowing the pen top while doing homework.
He immediately began spluttering and gagging... and trust me, retrieving that cap was the scariest fifteen seconds of my life.
But that's what babies do. If we had put the bottle top back down within reach... he would have cheerfully hoovered it up all over again.
Despite that fact, it would have been sheer idiocy to mount a campaign, to demand that the bottling industry develop some alternative method of sealing up beverage containers.
Which brings us back to Ben's parents.
My guess is, statistically... there are more British children killed by their own parents backing out of the driveway... than are killed by inhaling plastic pen tops... and yet, no reasonable person would suggest that people stop driving their cars for this reason.
And as difficult as it may be for these people to get over losing their son... they need to get off of whatever fantasy world they are trying to construct... where no one will ever again lose a child for whatever reason... and return to planet earth.
The fact is, while they are entitled to their grief, no amount of campaigning about pen tops will return their son Ben, much less bring any meaning to his tragic, premature death. What this silliness does, is simply moor them to that fateful, unbearable day and multiply their misery.
Some things cannot be made right. This is simply how the world works.
