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Joe, your columns sometimes are really thought provoking, and this one is especially good. Especially the constructive comments by Mr. Chaney are great.
I am a senior citizen, and I thought, what did I, what did my kids do? The word bored in my house meant "I want to do chores" so when my kids were looking for something to do, I said here is the list of chores, please do one and I am sure when you have completed the chore, you will think of something productive to do. They did, and I got the bathroom cleaned, or the vacuuming done in the process.
So my first suggestion is help your parents do a chore for them, then do something for yourself.
When my kids hung out in the boring winter, they went to an arcade and played video games, they went to a batting cage and hit base balls, did indoor miniature golf. They got together with friends and played musical instruments (much to my dismay, but hey it was winter) They had people over and played board games and video games. A couple of them did art work, one made model cars. These were boy things I guess, never had girl children.
When I was a kid the world was so much different, that I think what we did was not even close to a teenager today, but I will tell you a couple of things anyway. We did things in the winter that we mostly did not do in the summer. We were mostly at home, or in other kids homes. We played ping pong, and board games, we listened to records, we played music, we went to the skating rink, we went to the movies, we went for walks, we took photographs, we collected stuff, like stamps, and baseball cards, and pictures of movie stars, and did craft things, and read. I did art work, and made crafts stuff, like scarves and hats for my young sisters. My mother taught me to knit, and sew on the sewing machine.My uncle sent me stamps from all over the world, which I collected, money too. My father spent time with my brother in the garage with the car, let my brother learn to work on the car and change the oil and taught him how to work around the house fixing the plumbing, electrical and small projects.(sometimes I got to do it too)
We did chores, so did my kids, but we also volunteered (I worked with kids doing art projects at a local "camp" strangely today it would be an "after school center"
I did that when I was 13, at 17 I was a girl scout leader
And at 35 I did both of those things again.
No one is responsible for kids entertainment, I seems to me there are far more things to do now then there used to be. A metal detector at a thrift store is $2.00 the beach and the woods in rural areas are wealthy with "finds"
Since Joe has opened up this discussion, I would like him to invite comments as to what other generations did in their spare time. (I said spare, I studied, worked around the house, and baby sat as a job.)And perhaps this generation will get some good ideas.
My favorites from 50 years ago. I still do some all of them.
Collecting glass from the beach. Sometimes I found "treasures"
Being outdoors riding bikes, we went to some really great places, miles and miles from home.
Drawing, painting, making stuff from kits. Playing and making music.
Reading.
5 comments:
Good points being made, sounds like we grew up in the same time period.
lbuck
Joe: What we did on Long Island at ther start of the war was collect alluminum for the war effort and we collected and sold iron and steel to the junk man who came around once a week. We hit a gold mine in the woods for awhile, finding an old railroad bed with the big tracks in place. That kept us busy for weeks hauling and dragging the big lengths of track out for the junk man who paid us well for our efforts. Enough for a trip to the movies for the bunch of us, which was a treat. We also played kick-the-can, and fished in the ponds,played all the sports, went sleding in winter, picked bing cherries off a big tree in summer. There was always plenty to do and best of all we stayed out of trouble. We all joined the boy scouts, which added lots to do too.
A. Goetz
we always just "played", pure and simple play whether it was complex or simple...we always were playin some type of sport and running around. all the neighbors let us play, cept for few crabby ones...even the rabbai at the synagogue let us use the parking lot for baseball as long as service was not in session...
nintendo was first getting big along with super mario, our parents let us play, but kicked us out of house if it was during the day so we could play outside, but let us get together at night...
we had a roller rink which the schools would let us have a day off to go skate at for next to nothing for hrs...note salisbury doesn't have that anymore
see our our parents and our community members were supportive of us and encouraged us to do these things...do we have the same now a days? obesity rates seem to say otherwise. kids gettin into trouble, gangs, laziness.
the traditions of hard work and the simple things in life are getting forgotten...the no can do attitude and i want it now, easy, without any work is prevolent...
judging from my experiences working at the area schools and from college these values and practices are being lost at an alarming rate...lot of kids dont care about anything or whats important.
it starts at having a strong community grounded in values and the commitment to excellence...i believe there are three prongs to this community...leadership, parenting, and the rest of the community who help out each other...
as for the leadership, i'll defer to joe for that answer and constructive criticism
as for the parenting, i see it's not there. no consequences at home means no consequences at schools. its sad to see students more interested in arguing who is the best rapper, acting like they are the proverbial shit, or trying to sneak in playin their PSP all class...u can see where their life is heading, teachers as awesome as they are, cannot make the change without support at home.
the third prong, well help each other out, dont be disinterested in the community and whats going on...mentor, even if that means just giving a sentance or two of advice...show good practice, kids will immitate!
dont get me wrong, they're some great things in the area and some great people, but the area fails if it is not a collective whole effort by all...
Catus
We were fixated on fort building in the woods behind the house. Every kid in the neighborhood had one. We took turns building them in each others yards. We would work for weeks on a new fort, and spend a couple of weeks playing in it, and then we would see yet another more spectacular place in another kids yard and begin the process all over again. We would often rob some materials from some of the older forts, and we were constantly getting in trouble from our moms for leaving our stuff in our forts and letting it get ruined.
We would have camp outs in them in the summer, and drag our blankets inside our hand made palaces, cushions off of a cast off sofa or chair and when it would rain everything would get wet and ruined.
For some reason we just never were able to get the roofs right and whether tight. But we would just start all over again.
Life was grand when we were in our forts. We lived somewhere else, we were someone else, and no body told us we couldn't.
When I was younger we had a lot neighborhood "pickup" games, just taking turns and pick someone for your team, football, baseball or whatever was in season.
Organized sports just wasn't enough, we didn't want to play one game every week or two weeks, we wanted to play 3 or 4 games a day.
No wonder I ache now : )
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