BS: Back when it was OK to play.

Subject: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: GUEST,saulgoldie
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 03:16 PM

We regiment the lives of youngsters so much these days with extra-curricular activites and mounds of study. And when they catch themselves in a rare few minutes of inactivity, we watch them like hawks, lest they actually experience anything remotely like "real life."

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 04:00 PM

And we enroll them by the droves in adult-supervised, adult-coached organized athletic programs. When's the last time you saw a bunch of suburban kids playing a pickup game of baseball in a vacant lot? If a kid wants to play baseball nowadays it's going to be on a Little League team. The only team sport where pickup games are still common is basketball.

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 04:02 PM

The Salvation Army band played
And the children drank lemonade
And the morning lasted all day
... all day ...

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: GUEST,Martin gibson not logged in.
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 04:25 PM

Maybe your kids, not mine.

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: GUEST,so nobody else has said it yet?
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 07:34 PM

...with yourself!

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: bobad
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 07:38 PM

Damn onanist!

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 08:01 PM

Hooky?

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 08:19 PM

Well, yeah.... It is a sad commentary on the culture that we have fallen into... Hey, I'm prolly speakin' for most folks here but when we were kids, hey, we had fun... And we had a lot of ***freedom*** to make choices on how we spent our ***free*** (as in freedom) time... Folks just ain't as free these days...

Heck, kids can't even walk to the school bus stop and hang out together without half a dozen parents overlooking 'um... Like waht's that all about???

(Well, BObert, if little Johnny were to walk a block down the street to the school bus he's certainly be a target of a terrorist or pervert!!!...)

See what I mean??? Heck, part of this ramped up life-style has to do with fear, whci ain't good since, other than our own government, thaere really ain't that many terrorists and perverts out to get us... But fear keep folks all huddled up (team sports and activites) in bunches so the terrorists and perverts don't get us.... Or our kids...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 08:24 PM

"But fear keep folks all huddled up (team sports and activities) in bunches so the terrorists and perverts don't get us"

It also makes people much easier to control from the view point of the narrow minded soet of people who run governments and large private companies.

Have you ever tried herding cats?

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Apr 06 - 08:30 PM

Good point....

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: GUEST,G
Date: 13 Apr 06 - 08:17 AM

Isn't there a medication for Paranoia?

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 Apr 06 - 09:44 AM

But too many people are afraid to take it, lest it remove their reason for living...

Subject: RE: BS: Back when it was OK to play.
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Apr 06 - 10:33 AM

Rare as it is, I agree with Martin Gibson. My kids haven't been scheduled into all of that after school and weekend stuff. They participated in a twice-weekly walking/running program after school when they were in elementary school, because I wanted them to learn that walking (at the very least) is a recreational lifelong activity, so they went to various races over the years and had a lot of fun. If they wanted to do after school stuff they were welcome, but mostly they've been free agents to do their own thing. I think it's better for them to learn how to entertain themselves than to always expect someone to tell them what to do and how to play.

I wish I'd had a camera a few weeks ago when I was out walking the dogs in the woods near us and encountered my daughter and her friend down at our creek. The girls had found a couple of folding chairs that had washed downstream and they were sitting on a little sandbar, next to the bank, talking and skipping rocks and looking like a mellow scene out of Tom Sawyer down at the river.

SRS