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| Blogs > wickedeasy > wicked and that ain't so easy |
wanna play with me?
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wanna play with me? if you've read me for any time at all you know there's a park at the end of my street. charlie and i go there every day. he can be off lead and run because he has a town "goose buster" permit. usually there are between 6-12 dogs there and it's a good pack. they chase and wrestle and get along. occasionally there's some alpha noise...but nothing they can't figure out themselves if the humans don't get in the middle of it. but the reason for the post. there are hardly ever any at the park. doesn't matter the season or the hour of the day. at night there might be teens hanging there drinking. but no in the play area, no in the tennis courts or on the baseball diamond. no ..... when i was growing up, we had a big park across from my elementary school. when i got to be 8 and my sister 10, we were allowed to go there unescorted. strict rules about coming home and checking in but going to the park was like being free. it had equipment and two big hills and trees to climb and places to sit in the shade and just talk. we'd go in the morning, head home for lunch, go back in the afternoon, head home for supper and if mom would let us, go back after supper in the summer and head home when the streetlights came on. there were always enough for a pick up game of something, kickball, bball, softball, tennis. always enough for running bases or red rover. always enough and enough moms with little ones to make sure no one got too rowdy. we'd roll down the hills to get dizzy. we'd sit on the swings and talk about "boys". we'd do races in the summer and coasting in the winter, staying until our toes ached and then almost crying as we stumbled home. when i took J and S to the park last week we played pirates and had a blast. we were the only three people there. last summer, S met another little girl her age there one afternoon and said, wanna play with me and her mother grabbed her up like S had some contagious disease and swept her away. we used to play with whoever was there. i remember my heading down to the park to see if he could get a pick up game of bball and coming home three hours later dripping sweat. now he'd be standing there all alone. there's a soccer league in the spring. but once the game is done..........the are gone. seems a shame to waste a good park. i'm glad the dogs like it. but where are all the ? You cannot conceive the many without the one. |
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growing up i had 40 acres of creek land, hills and trees to play on, over, in...tons of kids,20 or so from surrounding blocks, to play hide n seek, kickball, tag, football, spies, fort...on and on. it was magical. now it's a sports field but some raw land remains. it was just called The Creek. "I'm going to the Creek!" i grew up there.
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I think there are a myriad of factors at work keeping kids off the street these days: -fear (someone will 'snatch' my child) -schedules (dance, karate, gymnastics, music lessons, etc.) -technology (video games, cell phones, computers, etc.) -two-earner families (parents are both at work, so little Bobby & Susie are either at the babysitter's or latchkey kids with strict instructions not to go outside or answer the phone) And, yeah, it was better back in the 'olden days.' *sigh Elevate me... 
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I think it's all part of the systemic problem of deskilling in the good old US of A. Everybody needs too much structure and specialization now. Nobody just plays anymore...they make play dates. Back in my day, we'd play ball all day. Didn't matter that we didn't have enough players to actually field a team...right field was a foul, if it hits the tree in the air it's a foul but on the ground it's in play, the other team supplied the catcher. Yep, back in those days we learned to negotiate and mitigate. Now when something unusual happens they all start looking around for the umpire to make a ruling. Course, we didn't put dog shit in bags back then neither, but even that taught us something about watching our step.
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We have NEVER had a park here in the country,,but we did go play in the Yadkin river,,maybe play in a cow pasture and run crazy in the woods.    ---------------------Dennis US ARMY (RETIRED) AND YOUR FRIEND I never mean to offend(blog or comment) anyone ,If I do contact me please. Please check out my blog Harley-Davidson Drive(19harley86)
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Yeah, what hippiechick said. There was no park nearby to my house when I was growing up, but lots of undeveloped land nearby, as we were right on edge of town. I just had a funny memory - we would go "sledding" in the summer by taking a big piece of cardboard and sitting on it and sliding down the hill that was across the street from my house    
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I agree with hippiechick that there are several factors at work. I think kids have too many organized "play" activities and not enough free time to be imaginative and just goof around with each other. Parents could oversee their children's play in the parks and teach them some basic safety skills while putting a whistle around their necks in case of emergency. In Az and here in Las Vegas, the extreme heat keeps kids indoors too unless they have access to a pool. I think we're the last generation to really enjoy so much free time and play opportunities with other kids. Never ignore those who care for you you will have lost diamonds while you were collecting stones
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Well, oui-oui... I think The Hipster Chick is kinda bouncin' around the truth of it. When I was a kid, we weren't even allowed in the house until dark, in the winter... or until dinner (in the summer) and then dark afterward. Parents these days are too damned worried that the chillins are gonna get damaged or snatched--or create a liability. We never thought about those issues as problems because we were all way too damned mean to feel pain when we got hurt. If someone woulda tried to snatch us, we'd have kicked the livin' shit outta them. And if we created any sorta liability, we'd have had our asses beat with a cane-pole and spent the rest of our childhoods workin' every weekend and every entire summer... until we paid off any accrued debts. We knew these things by default. Moms and/or Pops made that default scenario quite clear. These days, kids are way too coddled and insulated from "reality". They don't go out in the open (except maybe for school); and as for talkin', they do that with one of them POD things, by textin'... even when they're sittin' side by side. And the academic "brain-trust" has convinced most everyone that it's perfectly OK to have kids grow up like this... in a virtual world where the only pain encountered is that of having the battery run outta juice in the middle of a text message. The only snatchin' that's gonna take place is when they get a "hook-up" date from some pedophile who ran into their "face-fuck" account--and the kid was stoopid enough to rely on virtually-generated meet&greets rather than knowing that if some perv approaches you in the park, ya just kick 'em in the balls, bash the crap out of 'em with your baseball bat... and then find someone to call the cops. Things are never goin' back to the world we grew up in. Too bad, too. At least we learned how to navigate the "real" world... before we got sucked into this "virtual" one.  Solar...
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I grew up in the country on a farm. There were no parks around, but we had a lot of space to explore and because I had twin brothers, the neighborhood kids would congregate at our house for football or baseball. I think they figured that there was a guarantee of 4 kids (I was a tomboy) if they came to our house. Plus, we had barns and a creek and a pond for fishing. My dad was very strict though about who he allowed to swim, so that was pretty rare. Oh, and when I say neighborhood, I want to clarify that these kids were riding their bikes down gravel roads 2 miles or so to get to our house. I think we've become less social and open to folks as the years have passed. I don't ever remember parents arranging "play dates" or even us kids planning anything formal for getting together. I don't know if we sent smoke signals or what, we certainly weren't even calling each other, let alone texting, obviously. I can even remember if someone stopped in and we weren't done with our chores, they would help us finish. By the time we finished, more kids usually showed up to play. Nobody thought it was work or that they should be paid, it was just what we did so we could be done quicker.
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I'll add one more factor: Fewer kids I grew up in a family of four, next door were four more, then three and in the other direction three and five. Across the street, 8 and 5 and 2. So in a span of a block, there were 30 kids. Of course we all were not the exact same age, but the mass of kids was impressive when we all gathered together. Add in around the corners and on the next block and you had a critical mass. Now, two kids or less seems to be more of the rule. it seems to me. Charlie who would be happy to come play with you & charlie som day
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Dogs are so much better at negotiating alpha noise than humans. I've noticed parks rarely have any children on them unless they are with their parents--usually a picnic/softball game or little league practice. All the reasons for this have been covered. Now I'm thinking of a Cat Steven's song Where Do the Children Play? John Lee Hooker Recommended: [blog lucyjane78]
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