Childhood games

It's always interesting listening to my "elders" reminisce about their childhood. They had so much less than me, and yet they seemed to have something that my generation was starting to run out of, and of which the current crop of children has very little indeed - space to breathe.

Their parents were more stern, yet less controlling. Their lives less filled with "stuff", but probably better for it. My aunts and uncles were talking about the places where they used to play and the things they used to play with as children, and I felt a strange sorrow that few kids today would have those memories to recall when they reached their fifties.

We've lost the ability to be happy with a set of odd-shaped wooden blocks. We've lost the freedom to wander down to the nearest creek and fall into it. Our kids are kept safe and entertained, which means they don't get to know their environment and they don't know how to entertain themselves.

And its because my mother's generation decided that their own childhood wasn't suitable for their kids. Very poor of them, I think. Look where it's gotten us - sure, we have Tickle Me Elmos, but at the expense of running down to the creek with the other neighbourhood kids to catch frogs.

Of the two, I know which one I would have preferred for my children. Yes, I know, I don't have any children - and if I did I'd be just as likely to give them the doll and keep them away from the icky creek where the dangerous strangers might do horrid things to them. That's not the point.

Then again, maybe it is. The world my mother used to play in as a child no longer exists, and my kids wouldn't be able to play in it no matter how much I might want them to...