Esquire:

What happened to the America that once was? What happened to the America where kids could spend their snow-days at the local sledding hill, without cell phones in their snow-pants, laughing at their friends’ face-plants, throwing snowballs, and making the same yellow-snow jokes that their grandfathers made when they too were a bunch of rapscallions running through the slush?

That America exists no more in Paxton, Illinois. Because the Paxton Park District’s insurance provider ruled that its sledding hill is too risky. “The insurance would have skyrocketed if someone was hurt,” a parks board member told The Champaign News-Gazette.

One of the commenters said, “The park board ought to be able to erect a sign at the hill that says “Sled at your own risk.” How about NOT suing people because your kid got hurt horsing around, as kids will do? When I was a kid in Canada, I broke my leg playing on a local hill. There was never any discussion of a lawsuit.