Brain Buckets

Helmets used to be for bikers, and even bikers aren’t always crazy about them. Today, you’re weird if you’re not wearing a helmet.

Say the words “Big Wheel” or “Schwinn Stingray” to just about anyone over 40 and he’ll likely pull back some thinning hair to show you a scar and tell you a story — a story that usually involves participating in some variation of a copycat Evel Knievel stunt involving cinder blocks, plywood, a hill, pavement and a trip to the emergency room. For many baby boomers, getting a few stitches in the scalp was a childhood rite of passage.

Now that the boomers are parents, though, there’s no way they’d let their offspring be so scarred and scared by the ER doc and his needle (or worse). All the kids in the neighborhood are now fully helmeted, padded and protected by increasingly more high-tech and specialized safety equipment — whether they are riding their bikes or scooters or skateboards. Oh, and the formerly fearless boomers are wearing them, too — now realizing that their own bones and skulls are more fragile and are just one bad pothole away from being irreparably cracked.

And it’s not...