“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him” -Pablo Neruda
Concrete Jungle
An eight-year-old girl sits aside a three-foot strip of soil. This modern-day moat, planted with low shrubs that represent the only greenery for blocks, separates the path around the playground from the chain link fence that encloses it. She and her friends “cook” in their makeshift “kitchen,” the forsythia twigs and red spruce berries from the sparse flora their ingredients. The mother in this tableau appears only in spurts, when she pokes her head out of their fifth-floor apartment window to check on the girls. If they hear the Good Humor ice cream truck’s bells a few blocks away, the they alert her through the lobby intercom, and she may throw down quarters wrapped in paper towel, secured with twist ties, sealed in plastic baggies.
When the girls tire of their domestic duties they return to the rough and tumble landscape of this 1960s urban playground to play bottlecaps on a “board” painted onto the surface akin more to chunky than smooth peanut butter. The equipment that so amuses them comes with a threat. The swings, slide, and jungle gym — all metal — have smacked many a child hard. No forgiving foam tiles here in Queens to cushion children’s falls, just jagged little gravel pills. Bandaided knees and elbows well acquainted with Bactine abound.
This girl herself, in an I’m-an-invincible-child display of daredevilry and defiance has slid, belly-down, headfirst and planted her face in the black crumble, chipping one tooth, killing another, and shearing a strip of skin down the center of her face with the precision and speed of an expert esthetician performing a Brazilian wax. But none of the slings and arrows of outrageous recreational areas deter her (me) from her appointed playground rounds.
Fast Forward
It may have been safer, 50+ years ago, to let kids frolic freely without fear of abduction and injury. My mother told me that when I was an infant in the Bronx, she would join other new mothers at Woolworth’s counter for coffee while we lay in our strollers lined up outside at the window so they could keep an eye on us. Even when my family left the concrete jungle for the bucolic burbs, my sister and I would leave the house in the morning and cavort with the neighborhood kids until lunchtime, then again until dusk.
I suspect any parent that engaged in either of those parental practices now might receive a call or visit from the Department of Child Services.
Upshot for Downtime
It’s no surprise to learn how much screen time has increased over time, particularly during the pandemic. And while I cannot roundly condemn that in and of itself (you are, after all, reading this on a screen and I’d never want to dissuade anyone from that!), it seems certain implications of the mushroom cloud explosion of electronics are worthy of further examination. Particularly insofar as we trade screen-play for play-play. It is way too easy, both for children and adults, to drown in an eddy of electronics. Comedian Ronny Chieng makes our obsession with devices, scrolling, and crawling news tickers funny, but his bit also elucidates the potential downsides.
Especially in a time of stress, sinking into video games or staying transfixed to every opinion on an issue, whether it be politics or pandemics, only increases our discomfort level. In any 24/7 news cycle there is only so much new information on any given topic; the rest is a competition for talking head-supremacy and ratings. Especially in a time of stress, walking or running around inside or out helps to assuage tension – every schoolteacher who has had to deal with restricted recess knows this. Tay-Tay got it right in advising us to “Shake it Off” more. When I lived in England for 13 months recently, I had no television and watched no news. I felt immeasurably better for it.
We all might benefit from turning off the telly, the cell phone, and the tablet to stop and smell… you know the rest.
Leave Me
A four-year-old boy stands in a small depression in a browned patch of grass, bundled in snow boots, pants, and jacket. A hat with ear flaps and a visor secured by a chin strap practically engulfs his head. It hasn’t snowed in days, and most of it has melted, but it is 34°, and I know with certainty what his mother, well-insulated herself and a yard away from him, said to him before they left the house: “Let’s take a walk.” They suffer not from Covid-19, but from pandemic-induced cabin fever. “We need to stay warm!”
He wriggled, resisting the layers. I know this because I said it to my boys verbatim hundreds of times decades ago. I still need to resist the temptation to advise them how to dress in the cold, even into their third decade.
She watches serenely, almost beatifically – or she simply cannot move from sheer exhaustion and frostbite. He has firmly rooted himself in the divot, bending at the knees periodically to pick up oak leaves way past their expiration date. No autumnal gemstones, these, but the detritus that landscapers’ leaf blowers left behind. He holds each one, one at a time, gingerly, reverently. When he has made a thorough assessment, he turns to his mother, holding it up proudly to her. She nods, he places it down on the ground and picks up another, determined, it seems, to evaluate and admire all those that have eddied into this natural collection bin in which he stands.
He seems fully absorbed and delighted by stopping to smell the… brittle oak leaves. Nary a screen in sight.
This is fabulous, Diane. I love your writing!
I definitely see you on that slide!