Evan waxes nostalgic about his childhood.
I’m around Evan’s age (a little older… shhhh) and agree with him that most of the things in the age 35+ e-mail forward also apply to us. We played hopscotch by drawing with chalk on the street. We built snow forts on the front lawn. We didn’t have “smear the queer” (can you imagine a school allowing a game with a name like that today?) but we had tag, soccer, and a game that involved throwing a tennis ball against a wall with maximum force and trying to get people “out” if it bounced back and hit them. Once a year, the school janitor would go up to the roof to retrieve all the tennis balls that had gotten caught up there, and us students would run around underneath hoping to catch them as he threw them over the side. These days, the school could get sued if one of the tennis balls were to actually *hit* a student.
Nostalgia is a tricky thing, though. We all romanticize our childhoods and assume that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket for anyone coming afterwords. Despite excessive video games, pollution, political-correctness, self-esteem, and a distinct lack of playing outside, I have an inkling that the kids being born today will make it through somehow. Call me crazy… but we human beings have been at this for a while.
Nostalgia is indeed a tricky thing, and nostalgia for the days when more risks were tolerated, especially for children, is especially tricky. After my first daughter was born, we went out and boght a new high chair. It had a three point buckle seat belt.
Sheesh, I said to my mother, another example of the way we overreact to risk these days. We didn’t have seat belts on high chairs when I was a kid, did we? And what happened then?
Well, said mom, a few babies every year fell out of their high chairs and died.
Oh. I buckled my daugther in carefully every time I put her in the high chair.
“involved throwing a tennis ball against a wall with maximum force and trying to get people “out” if it bounced back and hit them…”
–yep, i remember that, it was called murder ball and I freakin’ hated it. But i’d whip your ass at tackle tennis (kinda like football but with no rules), no-fowl basketball, arm wrestling, and king of the mountain any day–had to be renamed QUEEN of the mountain in my last year 😉 *Sigh* Fuck puberty…Did I just say that?
Fuck puberty…Did I just say that?
Yep. Thanks for the laugh.