“Zoom” © R.L. Herron
You don’t have to go far to see how we have super-organized the lives of our children. Just look at the average park or neighborhood school yard and you will see it.
Organized youth baseball, softball, soccer and football abound. Basketball and hockey are included, too, as is nearly every sport you can name. Kids go to camps for everything from sports to music and adults mentor, instruct and shepherd them every step of the way.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of kids who don’t have the opportunity who would love the chance to participate.
But whatever happened to kids organizing their own games?
I played baseball, basketball and football as a kid, and some of it was on organized teams and leagues.
An awful lot of it, however, was just kids getting together and deciding to play whatever game it was that day. We’d figure out where to go, choose our own teams and enforce the rules ourselves, sometimes adjusting them to accommodate too many or too few players.
We didn’t always have all the equipment we needed. Football was played with just a football, or at least a football-shaped object. No helmets. No pads. No special shoes.
Two pass completions might equal a first down, regardless of yardage gained.
Baseball sometimes used actual baseballs, but it frequently used taped-up round things that might once have been baseballs, and bats that were occasionally only big, smooth sticks of the appropriate length.
Mitts were shared, and bases might simply be paper bags held in place with a rock. “Shirts and skins” were our uniform designations.
It didn’t take a lot of technology, no electricity, and we certainly didn’t need joysticks for anything. We also didn’t need leagues overseen by committees of adults who required monetary deposits for entry, insisted on parental insurance waivers and treated everything like it was the World Series, World Cup or Super Bowl.
We would play the games, on actual ball fields if they were available, in an open field or someone’s yard, if not.
We would monitor ourselves, keep our own score and settle our own arguments, all without an adult standing over us.
We never heard of frivolous lawsuits, field reservations or player statistics. Still, we learned how to interact with each other and express ourselves. Most of all, we had fun.
Are we that afraid today of letting kids out of our sight?
What a sad state of affairs. I can’t help wondering if today’s kids, with all the new technology available, adult organization and special things at their disposal aren’t somehow worse off than we were.
Doesn’t anyone want to have a catch?
Painting With Light 