You can't be too careful, but you can be too neurotic

“No running in camp!”

Wait. Scout camp has been over for weeks, but in the hills of Osceola – where the rocks cause many cuts and scrapes, and worse – you learn to automatically blurt that out at any young person breaking into a trot.

But this wasn’t camp. It was an airport, and a young woman probably was just trying to catch her flight.

I didn’t yell that out loud, did I?

Giving myself the benefit of the doubt, I kept shuffling along, looking for coffee and news. No running for me. But it got me to wondering: When did I become such a mother hen?

I have a co-worker who is young, bright, able and energetic. And none of that has anything to do with the following:

We were crossing the street to get to an assignment. A car came along, maybe a little out of nowhere, maybe a little fast.

Anyway, she said I “mom barred” her. Without thought, the arm came out like a railroad crossing gate, stopping her in her tracks as if she were 6.

Fortunately, she said she was cool with it. After all, it’s all about safety.

So what’s next? Do I start wandering the mall, telling people not to walk under ladders or step on cracks? Do I call good friends in the dead of night and tell them to go to the fridge and check expiration dates? Do I just stay home and bark at the TV as one safety violation after another scans past?

The other day, I saw the same deliberately stupid act twice, in different locations. Both times, I was sitting at a red light when suddenly another driver ahead of me evidently decided he or she had sat long enough.

And off they went, through a red light from a dead stop. It left me speechless – a safety violation and poor manners – unable even to muster up a “no running in camp!”

I know where this ends. I make a foil helmet to protect myself from secret UFO-mind-control rays. Then I start making them for friends and family, annoying them and causing discreet phone calls to the medical community.

Ah, but this is the age of the Internet. By the time the professionals intervene, I’ve have set up a marketing Web site and will make 45 blogs posts a day about the need to check and make sure your extension cords haven’t become frayed and dangerous. I’ll be famous.

This is America, baby. You can’t commit a celebrity to the funny farm, or at least not without a messy, 24/7 cable news fight. I’ll bring on media consultants to help me spin the story with me in a sympathetic light, and have an even bigger stage from which to scold the world about its manifest shortcomings.

Watch out, Dr. Phil.