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When's the last time...
(by Ed Flynn - June 11, 2008)
… you saw boys playing stickball in the street?
Or saw girls jumping rope, and who remembers those singsong ditties they would chant? “One potato, two potato, three potato, four…” Something like that, wasn’t it?
Remember when every neighborhood had a barrel rim or a bushel basket with the bottom cut out nailed to a telephone pole for basketball?
When’s the last time you saw a boy climbing a tree?
Or a girl pushing a doll carriage?
Does anybody still play King of the Mountain or Ring-o-levio, and do all the kids in the neighborhood still get together in the evening to play hide-and-seek. And when the summer arrives do children still catch fireflies in a bottle?
Do youngsters still play with hula hops or yo-yo’s and if they do can any of them “walk the dog” or “rock the baby in a cradle?”
Remember when every young boy had a bag of marbles with his favorite “aggie” or shooter and carried it around in his back pocket just in case someone wanted to challenge him to a game? One of the games as I recall was played by trying to hit marbles out from inside a circle and another required sinking your marble in a hole, sort of like golf.
And how about those games we played with a jackknife? One of them involved scratching the outline of a large box in the dirt and taking turns throwing your knife so it would stick in the ground and then dividing the area on the basis of where the knife stuck until one of the guys didn’t have enough ground left in which to fit his foot. And there was another type of competition that involved trick shots with your jackknife like flipping it in the air so it would revolve once or twice before sticking in the ground.
Do kids still have “pickup” baseball games on vacant lots where they use flat rocks or roofing shingles for the bases? And do they still choose up sides by exchanging grips on the handle of a bat with the last guy able to squeeze in two fingers getting first choice?
Does anybody roller-skate in the street these days or play hockey on roller skates using two tins cans to mark the goals? And do you remember those keys you needed to attach the skates to your shoes? And what about all those other games played in the street like “one-o-cat” using a rubber ball and a broomstick for a bat?
Is making slingshots from a forked piece of a tree branch and an old inner tube a lost art and, come to think of it, where would anyone find an inner tube today anyway? Remember how we used them when swimming? And when it comes to homemade playthings, how about those scooters made from a two-by-four and old roller-skate wheels or those more elaborate cars that used orange crates and wheels from an old baby carriage and a piece of clothesline to steer it by turning the front axle?
How about all those improvised games like the ones that could be played with bubble gum baseball cards… like taking turns throwing cards in the air and calling heads or tails with the winner getting the card? Or pitching pennies at the curb? Or playing hand tennis on the sidewalk using the crack in the concrete to mark off the courts? And do any children today still play “Hop Scotch” or know the rules for “Simon says” or “Red light, green light” and can you still buy what you need to play “Pick up sticks” or “Jacks”?
And does anyone remember when jigsaw puzzles were so popular and when board games like Monopoly could last all day long or those “Let’s pretend” games, many of them that would be socially unacceptable today, like “Cowboys and Indians” and “Cops and robbers” and the cap pistols and make-believe rifles we pointed at each other and shouted, “Bang, you’re dead!”?
As a matter of fact, when’s the last time, in this era of television and video games and organized sports, that you’ve actually seen the children in your neighborhood playing by themselves; maybe just riding a bike or a couple of them getting together for a game of catch in their driveway?
But don’t get me wrong; I’m not advocating that anyone go out and buy their child a jackknife or show them how to make a pea shooter or a bow and arrow from a flexible tree branch with thin, straight branches for arrows. There’s no doubt some of what we did in the so-called “Good old days” was dangerous, but it did have one benefit – it required that you use your imagination.
And sometimes I can’t help but wonder what happens if, like muscles, imagination, too, grows flabby from lack of use. After all, as even Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
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