Another day of August, the “Dog Days” as some refer to them. The hot sultry period of summer between early July and early September in the northern hemisphere. A period of stagnation and inactivity. In order to get through the steamy dog days of summer, doctors recommend drinking plenty of fluids and avoiding overexertion.
My kind of doctors.
So taking their expert advice, I am sitting on the front porch, glass of sweet tea, and lounging around in my new outdoor chairs that I bought this week at “the end of summer sale” at Academy Sports, $15.99 marked down to just $10.
(I am now ready for my smart shopper tag, but I bet the wife will not allow it)
The lady down the street is “hovering over her children” again. I don’t understand this at all, when did we start raising our kids in bubbles? It is as if a kid has no right to go outside, to run, to hide, to blow off all that explosive energy that children seem to have.
When I was a kid, we were allowed to run free, to experience life, to learn, to go outside and play without adult supervision. It was my mothers’ favorite mantra ……. Jeeze Don just go outside and play!
It was outside where we did our favorite child things. Climbed trees, fell out of trees, smashed our little heads. We got into fights and every now and then that crazy old guy from down the street would walk by with his raincoat on (when it was not raining) and do really weird stuff!
Outside I not only learned that “I did not have SuperMan powers and amused my friends by jumping off the roof of my fathers house, with my mothers best bathroom towel wrapped around my neck.”
Outside is where I learned to climb a utility pole, walk thru a railroad tunnel in the dark, abscond with the neighbors Christmas Lites and listen to them explode when tossed like a hand grenade.
Outside, playing and wrestling with our dog, is where I learned if he licked you in the face, you wouldn’t die, as my mother had told me previously. At the park on Saturdays, with all my buddies, I learned I could not hit a curve ball. That swinging on a swing set with a girl, wasn’t all that bad, and walking them home from school was kind of cool.
If you played your cards right, outside was all right indeed.
You could go down to the creek, catch a bunch of tadpoles, take them home in an old fruit jar, feed them the scrapin’s off burnt toast and watch ‘em turn into frogs. You could secretly keep a pet snake in your room until your little sister snitched you out to Mom and Dad. Put your tooth in a bottle of Coke and watch it disappear on the windowsill.
This new generation of parents we have now do not allow that kind of freedom in a kid. They are pampered, protected, watched over like they are some kind of breakable fine china or something. This gal down the street from me does it all the time.
Kids should be allowed to simply be kids, to laugh about nothing in particular, just for the sake of laughing. You ever notice that. They just crack up for no apparent reason … A rule of life when you are a kid.
Half of the kids today are not allowed to ride their bikes out of a parents visual range, or allowed to climb a tree in their own yard. Most kids are inside, fully supervised, playing video games or whatever. Over-protection of a child, in my opinion, is unhealthy, it sucks the joy out of living right out of them.
Keeping your kid on a tight leash is selfish; it does the child absolutely no good whatsoever.
It seems that the only permanent thing in life, is change. And things changed. We just had baby strollers or buggies, now they have these four and six wheeled monsters that somewhat resemble a Porsche or a fine tuned sports car. It’s unfortunate, but we seem more interested in “projecting the right image” in this country, instead of raising our children right.
The gal down the street doesn’t know it. But I have been secretly teaching him how to catch and toss a Frisbee when she isn’t looking. It isn’t much, but it is the best I have to offer right now.
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Sometimes I think our generation had the last good childhoods – in terms of freedom to play and take risks etc.
As a child I used to be able to go out all day as long as I was back in time for tea. These days parents are afraid to let their kids out of their sight – let alone allow them to disappear all day. It is sad but justified.
I don’t know whether it’s my awareness or not – or whether these things are now more in the public eye – but there seem to be far more perverts about one way or another. When they’re not luring children over the Internet, they are preying on them outside. It is not a good era to be a child.
The excess of toys and games that the children of today get given does not (in my opinion) make up for the freedom of being able to sprawl in a field up to your elbows in a pond of tadpole spawn – or climb trees and scrump apples. Those were the days … before the perverts and health and safety officials ruled the world. Sigh ….
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One of the things that really gets to me personally, is that I like kids, and now it is not advisable to “hug a kid” because it can be taken entirely the wrong way. And you know J, every kid in the world, needs a hug at times. But it is outright dangerous for an old geezer to hug a kid in this day and age.
You are absolutely right, we had it better, and that is not just some nostalgic look back, it is a fact. About the closest my mother ever got to over protecting me was passing on her phobias and notions that she had, which a lot of them were dead wrong.
I still remember going to the movies as a kid, and she would say, “Now listen. There are bad men who like little boys and they hang out in bathrooms and they molest little guys. Don’t let anyone touch you … Be careful.”
I don’t know how many restrooms I evacuated in a hurry because there was a man in there. It is good your kidneys and bladder are strong when you are young eh?
Not easy being a kid today, you are right, whole different ballgame now.
DS
Comment by Author — August 17, 2008 @ 4:08 AM