Date: Monday, February 1 2010

Being a kid isn't like it used to be

By JIM STEELE, Editor pressbox1.com

I was reading a Facebook post from an old friend today. She is concerned about her 12-year-old son's computer time, specifically time he spends playing computer games and what places are suitable for a youngster to visit. These are valid concerns. Our kids are more street wise today than perhaps my generation. When I was growing up, the concern was whether or not to let kids see PG movies (which were known as "GP" movies before that), watch the horror soap opera "Dark Shadows," or read MAD magazine. Now, with all the violence and sex available at a mouse click, fewer stay-at-home parents and fewer households with two parents, there are greater risks. It is what it is. And as a result, our kids have been exposed. The concern in my day was whether or not we watched too much television. As electronics have improved, passive entertainment has billowed. When we got home from school, we watched Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch and the Munsters, but then we went outside, if we didn't do that first. Today, kids come home and spend countless hours either texting, updating their MySpace page or playing "Nuclear Megadeath" and "Beheading Babies" on the computer, often while gulping down cola beverages. Now before you get bent out of shape and accuse me of making this a political piece, relax. I am libertarian enough to recognize that if parents are okay with kids playing on the computer and drinking caloric sodas, that's cool with me, too. It's just that I can remember, even with the cola beverages and after school episodes of "Lost in Space," we still were outside doing something, depending on the season, mood, or company you kept. I remember, as do several of my contemporaries, sitting in school all day, not focusing on the task at hand, rather on the whiffle ball game that was going to take place in someone's back yard after school. If it wasn't whiffle ball, it was basketball in someone's driveway or football in someone's lot. Or we were out riding bikes. Now it's even hard to find a backboard in someone's driveway. We were out playing ball or riding bikes until it got dark, it was suppertime, whatever came first. Even on days when we had Little League or Babe Ruth baseball games, we were often out the day of the game doing something. If we had a day game, we were at the sandlot immediately following. And you didn't want to lose there because you'd hear about it the next day at school. I loved the feeling of throwing that perfect pass, feeling the bat flex or hearing the mitt pop, feeling the golf ball explode off the club head for a 300-yard shot, experiencing the perfect stroke off that long-distance shot or hitting that tennis shot right on the sweet spot. To me that's more satisfying than casting my fate to the random whims of a computer chip. Yes, the climate has changed. It's not as safe as it once was to go to ride your bike to the sandlot, even in rural West Tennessee. And let's be honest, there are some frustrated former-athlete parents who live vicariously through their kids. They load them down with every travel team that comes down the pike. There are positives and negatives to that. But the sad thing is that if a kid starts playing travel ball/AAU at, say, age 8, his skills don't get that much better. At 18, he's playing with the same skills he had at 8 but is just more physically mature. Then when fundamentals are at a premium, these kids can't answer the bell. Playing ball for the kids these days is an obligation more than it is a spontaneous activity. And the natural knee-jerk is to resist obligation. I remember seeing kids joining travel teams with the ostensible notion to play in college somewhere. But after spending all their weekends and summers playing in-season and out of season, when it comes time to play college, and even high school, they are tired of it. They quit and it's a shame. But that's where we are. Back in the day, if we didn't have enough for batting practice or 500, we played hotbox/pickle, where you had two bases and you tried to steal while the two other players threw back and forth. We had great skills, as a result, for playing in rundowns as fielders and runners. Today, not so much. When I drive through McKenzie, sometimes I wonder if there are any kids in town. There are very few playing football in the yard, playing catch, shooting hoops in the driveway or playing tennis at the courts. I'm not crazy about it, but I do see some kids on skateboards. At least that's something. So to my friend who is worried about her 12-year-old son, let him play his computer games, but balance it with some sort of activity outside.