I really do. I mean they are so deprived. Do you remember slides in the 80's? Yeah, they were like twenty feet tall with a ladder leading up to them. Then there was the jungle gym. It was a latticework of metal bars welded together and painted and chipped so many times it was almost psychodelic. The monkey bars? There was a price for falling off of those things and you learned to make it all the way across. We had safety back then too. Some genius decided that dirt wasn't safe so the playgrounds would be full of tiny rocks or pea gravel. Sure it broke a fall but it was even more helpful in playground wars.
It isn't just playgrounds though. Our children will never discover (on there own) the strength of Adam as he defended Eternia. They will not know that life is like a hurricane in Duckburg. Gummy bears will always only be something you eat. Nothing will ever be smurfy to them. They will never shout thunder, thunder, thundercats, Hoe! Imaginations will be hampered as they will only ever see the lamborgini's with the doors that open upwards as cars and not as possibly planes too. They will never be eager to wake up early on Saturday mornings or before school and flip on the TV, because, lets face it, the news isn't fun for them. What hope is there if they don't know that Captain Planet will take pollution down to zero? Sure they have the transformers, but is it really transformers if the Lion song "The Touch" doesn't send shivers down their spine.
Cereal sucks too. How many toys have you pulled out of your box lately? Very few if you are like me. Most boxes want you to collect 10 tops and send them in with 3.95 for shipping and handling for something crappy you don't really want. How are kids supposed to know which cereal to buy without the toy showing the way? Where is the Trix Rabbit, Snap, Crackle, and Pop? Why does Hannah from Montana have her own cereal. Why aren't my kids cucoo for Cocopuffs.
Their whole lives are seatbelted, safe, and educational. Kids are not allowed to have fun, be daring, or experience violence in fictional yet very real fashion (oh, you know you cried when optimus died). They will never learn that prize doesn't always justify the expense without having to eat a box of crappy cereal because they just had to have the toy that was inside. Without fun toys, how will children ever get exercise. Sure they would rather play video games than turn the stearing wheel on the plastic, sanitary playground equipment embedded on soft foam with monkey bars that you have to lift your knees so you don't drag the ground. I would too. How will kids learn to appreciate good storytelling when current cartoons are all fart jokes. Kids today will never know that knowing is half the battle; so, they have just lost half the battle. Without good fighting evil in cartoons how will kids grow up to know that good is supposed fight evil or that evil even exists in the first place?
We have oversanitized our world and our children will have no immunities.
7 comments:
i'm totally with you on this one, budd.
Greap post. Amen on so many accounts -- especially "...their whole lives are seatbelted, safe, and educational..." (I'd add over-scheduled!) and your last sentence. Couldn't agree more -- it is sort of sad.
Totally broke my ankle on the monkey bars when I was in second grade. I learned not to trust the monkey bars.
No halloween costumes either--or limited. My friend was reprimanded last year when she let her kid go as superman...turns out that was an "unrealistic" costume. You could pretty much only let your kids go as animals or as professions...doctors, firemen, etc. Oh my. No witches. No fairy princesses. No He-Men. No Batmen. No imagination.
It's an odd feeling to think that we wish our kids could have what we had, when so often we hear parents say they want their kids to have what they never had...
I think those things we had as kids were unimaginably better than what they are offered these days. I cannot think of a life without wondering when Duncan would tell Teela that The Sorceress was her mother!!
It seems so many adults want their kids so sheltered... a little drama, and a little dirt, is good!!
Right on! Good post.
AMEN!
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