Tuesday, July 19, 2011
I KNEW IT!!
Yes, godammit, yes.
Sponges on the ground. Low plastic jungle "gyms". All the soft looking, risk free, environmentally controlled, wildly colored boring playgrounds now are no challenge, not interesting and basically they scare kids. Jeez. It isn't safe to play.
This article mentions the importance of heights and getting scared.
Instantly, I remembered my climbing tree up on the hill near our house. Not even a built recreational device.
It was hard to get into that tree and I had to be a bit taller and stronger before I could lift myself into it.
Once I could, there was no limit to the heights I would go to see over the other trees below and out into our larger town.
But the thrill was the climb, the shaky limbs, the fear of falling. All of these things, sometimes an inch at a time, conquered.
And not an adult in sight. Nowhere. The tree was on a rock "fence" line and so the fall, if any, was perilous indeed.
To their credit, my parents did not tell me to stay out of it. Actually, they may not have even known that I was in it.
I was mostly a latchkey kid, on my own as both parents worked.
I went and did what I wanted.
In those days, the neighbors had eyes and that helped kids stay safe (although they took Mr. Vernoy, two doors down, away for molesting some other boys in the neighborhood). But still.
I am so against all this over-protective bullshit. Parents who come with their kid to meet me when I interview for MIT. Jesus.
When it was time, I flew to Boston and stayed overnight in a hotel, went and visited MIT and flew home again all by myself. I was 16. Imagine. Part of why I could do that is that I climbed that tree by myself.
Do kids even think of climbing trees any more?
The world is going to hell in a handbasket.
