I went out for a run earlier this evening in the subdivision just down the road from me. As I started to turn back for home, circumstances required that I walk the rest of the way or else something very embarrassing would happen. Runners will understand. :-)
Still, it was a lovely evening. The sun was setting but at 8:30 there was still plenty of light. It was not too hot or humid, but warm enough to be outside in summer clothes.
I loved nights like this as a kid. My siblings and the neighborhood kids and I would stay out as late as our parents would allow, playing games like Freeze Tag, Wolf Wolf, Ghost in the Graveyard, Hide-and-Seek, and other group games. We also made up our own, such as pretending that cars coming down our street were monsters and that we had to be absolutely still until it passed or it would find us.
Needless to say, we made a lot of noise. :-) "Curfew" was set by the streetlights. When the streetlights came on, we had to be back in our own yard, but often we were still allowed to stay outside and catch lightning bugs. We hated being sent to bed before it was totally dark. Two of my sisters now live in that neighborhood with their children, and it is much the same with them as it was with us growing up.
As I was walking through the nearby neighborhood, then, something seemed amiss. It finally dawned on me that it was too quiet. I know children live around there, I have seen some of them on walks with parents. I can see play areas in the backyards through the fences. On that whole run and walk, I saw exactly one child this evening and he was taking out the trash.
I started thinking about why that might be. Were the kids too caught up in TV and video games to want to play outside anymore? Were parents too afraid to let children out to play unsupervised, for fear of abduction? Was there some sort of anti-play/anti-noise sentiment in the subdivision (after all, this is the type of neighboorhood that has civic association meetings)?
I decided that the real answer was probably some combination of all of the above plus other things I hadn't considered. Regardless, the effect was that the neighborhood was just way too quiet for a nice summer evening.
And that made me a little sad.
3 comments:
I have much of the same recollections from my childhood. It is a shame that society has changed so much.
funny, I live in an urban neighborhood, although a very family oriented, safe one and kids are out playing all the time here.
I never played some of those games you mentioned Kris, but I loved playing as it got dark.
With my brothers, it was usually sports oriented stuff, mainly baseball. I don't think my brothers would've been as good a little league players as they were without the practice disguised as play.
But I remember just roaming around the neighborhood around in my Big Wheel and later my Rollfast bike and not wanting to go home until it turned really really dark or the mosquitoes turned too vicious. It's definitely not the same these days for certain, sad to say.
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