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When I Was A Kid...
When I was a kid, growing up in the 80's and early 90's summer was the greatest thing in the entire world. Specifically Monday though Friday when Dad was at work, and Mom wanted us out of her frickin hair. The glorious phrase "Go outside and play!" was all we needed to dash outside with enthusiasm and brainstorm some off-the-wall activity that could never be done indoors. My brother Paddy, my sister Kelly, and I along with our best friends and neighbors Jeffrey and Victoria and cousin Sean would gather in the back yard and invent the most elaborate games and schemes all day until it was dark, Dad was home from work, and we were forced to go inside.
Summers were spent building forts, playing war with Mud-clod bombs, pretending to be miners on the abandoned railroad tracks behind the house, working up the nerve and being dared to cross the railroad bridge (all the while fearing the ten foot drop onto pavement from rotting out tracks), dashing down to the florist down the street and begging to sweep their floor for a quarter only to go blow it in penny candy as a sweet reward on a hot sticky day.
We put on Bike Shows for my mother and the neighbors that consisted of nothing more than riding our bicycles up and down the street in the back of the house. "This time it's ONE HANDED!" We were daredevils in our own minds, and the discovery of an old tractor tire behind the house entertained us for days. Back when I was a kid (I sound like my Grandma...) children were allowed to go out, get used to the world, we were encouraged to explore it and figure it out on our own, to get massive colds from playing in the rain and spend one miserable day indoors only wishing to be able to go outside and play with the others who were pretending to be pirates on the swingset.
We grew bonds that still hold us together as siblings today, we have stories that make us laugh until we cry when we sit around the dinner table and think about it. We learned to rely on each other for protection, or to kill time a lonely day, we became more and more creative with our games, and dispite whatever crap may have happened when I was a kid, I can look back on those time when we played in the yard and remember it fondly. And the more that I look around now, seeing the world from adult eyes, the more I worry about the youth of today.
Yards and back roads are no longer filled with kids riding bicycles and having crab-apple fights. On hot days there are no sprinklers in the yard that the children are doing cartwheels through. There are no colourful drawings on sidewalks and driveways done in oversized chalk, and the familiar clack and shakes of jump ropes and hula-hoops are nowhere to be found. Instead you see kids inside on their laptops, talking on cellphones, playing XBox or Wii, listening to their iPods, watching television or playing on the computer. Kids are pale and sickly looking from staying indoors at all costs. Where is the fun and excitement that comes with summer vacation, with endless time, day after day, to play outside instead of being locked up in a classroom?
What creativity is gained from playing a videogame? What excercise are you getting sitting in front of the computer? (And try as you might, you can NOT convince me that Wii = exercise.) Kids are unable to build up the immunities and tolerences that they should be developing outdoors as they play. Where is the comradery between siblings, the lifelong bonds that they should be growing and developing? What stories will you look back on as adults and laugh about?
When I was seven years old, the meanest kid on the block lived right up the street from us. I was riding my bicycle and he pushed me off and kicked me. I rode home, crying, upset that the local bully had gotten me (again) and without a moment of hesitation, my brother, cousin, and my brother's best friend devised a plan to lure the boy down and get him back, defending me from the bully! They brought him down the street, and in all the triumph of childhood battles, nailed him with the garden hose and made him cry. My brother and I still look back on that and laugh, thinking about a simpler time when great bullies were defeated with hoses and super soakers, when running up the slide after a rain was the childhood equivalent of conquering Everest, and when all you needed to pass an entire day was a little bit of imagination, and a backyard.
I'm saddened for the youth of today. I wish that I could teach them all the joys of catching a garden snake, or trapping Fireflies in jars, show them the right way to play hop-scotch, or show them why hide-and-seek is a million times better when you play in the dark. But alas, I'm afraid that kids now-a-days just don't care about any of that anymore. Unfortunately it's just not going to sink into their Xbox soaked minds.
