It’s a warm autumn Friday, and I’m home from school. My mother is in the den talking to friends on the phone. My two older brothers don’t get out as early as I do and won’t be home for hours. I’m eating cereal, Cheerios, to tide me over until dinner. I page through the latest issue of Life Magazine as I eat. It has big color photographs of animals. Wild
Weekends for children then were unscheduled. They are a two-day block of unbroken time for me to fill. Monday and school seem far off. After I’ve put my bowl in the sink, I find something that’s been thrown away or something I’ve had and forgotten about, or something new. Maybe it’s a discarded radio, a tape recorder, or an alarm clock. I take it upstairs to my room where I take it apart to see how it works and see if any of its components can be used for something else or made to move somehow. Although my understanding of electricity and mechanics is slight, I can figure something about how it operates. Wires, lenses, circuits, switches. Small electronic motors with tiny gears, cogs, and belt drives. I take off the cover of the device and expose its secrets. This occupies me happily until dinner.
You describe the wonder of childhood at that time so very well. I am exactly your age and I remember weekends just like this; and they were lovely. I believe children develop much more imagination, intelligence, and competence when allowed unscheduled time to play, read, experiment, and figure things out. Todays hyper-competitiveness among kids, which leads to over-scheduled, unhappy kids, is toxic. I think most of it is based on parents’ using their kids to fulfill their own ambitions and dreams.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading this and commenting on it. What you say about why parents now are like that makes complete sense. Perhaps our Depression-era parents were satisfied enough that we had full stomachs and decent shoes that they didn't feel the need to interfere the way they do now.
Delete