What Will Tomorrow Be Like?
March 30th 2011 05:26
So it is with ever so slightly rose coloured glasses that I peer back into the not-so distant recesses of my past to hear my mother tell us to go outside and play and that the house was not the place to run around.
Given just about every mother worth their salt afforded the same rant (notice how I say mothers - given most mums were at home back in the day when the kids arrived bedraggled from school) then the local backyard/park was where you'd find hoards of pre-pubescents running, kicking, throwing, climbing and generally running amok until it was deemed time to return safely to the confines of the family quarters.
The theory was sound of course - fresh air, sunshine, exercise, friends and open space plus a ounce of creativity when it came to inventing games to amuse yourselves.
There was the added benefit for mum of course that you were out of her hair and that come dinner time - you'd pretty much chew the leg off a chair if it was dished up and hit the sack without too much complaining.
Half busted tennis racquets, cricket bats and semi inflated footballs were the order of the day and come summer - climbing trees to catch cicadas was a right of passage for every young boy and if you knew someone with a pool - well, that was GOLD!
You'd have some organised sport on the weekends - but unlike today where every second kid seems to be in some rep team - it was pretty basic stuff.
If you were a bit peckish you'd check out someone's mulberry tree and hope mum didn't find out.
Board games were restricted to rainy days and the corner shop was like Aladdins Cave.
No one seemed to have a purebred dog, kids played marbles and knucklebones (or jacks), girls skipped using ropes in playground and invented some strange game called 'elastics'.
Grazes on knees and elbows were pretty much an everyday event and any treatment was left until it was usually too dark to play outside anymore.
You decided who was 'in' by putting your foot into a circle with others and recite some rhyme before discounting everyone but one.
You made those weird little folded paper thingy's where you would ask someone to choose a number, then a colour before opening up the folded side which proudly proclaimed you loved so and so or you smelt.
"Brandings" and "bullrush" where you threw balls at your mates or tackled them to the ground in order that they be part of your team were acceptable games at school and you knew every street in the district because you'd walk to friends places.
Yep - things have changed. I can't quite remember the very day - but I suspect it was a while back now. Not so long that I can't recall - but perhaps because I choose not to.
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