Safe Play

A while back I was having coffee with a friend of over 20 years. We were sitting out on her patio and her three kids were running around on the lawn, closely supervised by the neighbor's dog (I think it was an Australian shepherd). Suddenly the boy walks over to us and asks for his PSP.

Friend: Why do you want it?
Boy: I'm bored.
Friend: Well, you have to get it yourself.
Boy: Fine.

And he runs inside.

I was just stunned. It was a warm and sunny day. The boy was seven years old. Somehow, a seven years old child managed to get bored while being outside on a sunny day. I was blown away.
Later that evening I saw the oldest daughter sitting in a pile of long-forgotten Legos and cars and doll clothes, and she was playing a bubble shooter game on an iPad. Once again I was stunned. I couldn't, and still can't, understand how you would pick a game with pre-set rules and conditions over the infinite possibilities of your own imagination. Even I could come up with a dozen things to do with the toys, but she preferred the iPad.

Lately, I have realized that this is how the world works now.

When I was growing up, my parents had to drag me in and forbid me to leave the table, under pain of death, when it was time to eat. Being grounded was a very real and very distressing punishment. They just had to threaten with confinement to the home for us to behave (well, to not act as hyperglycemic raptors, at least). Now parents have to kick the spawn out for said offspring to go outside and play.

I can't remember being bored often as a child. Sure, long hours in a car when going to either of my grandmothers' houses were boring, but when playing, there was always some form of entertainment.

We would paint apples with watercolors and try to sell them.
We would climb trees and rocks.
We had two club houses, one in a tree and one between two cliffs.
We rode bikes all day (there are some memories of thorny bushes and a lamppost when coordination and survival instincts failed me).
We would go sleighing and have snow ball fights and build snow men in winter.

We were scraped and bruised and wet and dirty. And it was fine! No one cared about the state of our clothes.
We had twigs in our hair and grassy feet. There was sand under our fingernails and sludge in our boots. I sprained a finger when rollerskating down a cobblestone road. I hit a park bench when sleighing down a hill in wint. I hurt my back after falling out of a tree and I've stepped on more seashells than I can remember.

And you know what? I would gladly do all of that again (maybe not the lamppost or the park bench, though. Or falling out of a tree.)