Everybody lies

posted on Sunday, September, 16th, 2007 in default

I just came back from walking my dog. To come back home from our usual route along the river we have to walk along the street where we live for a bit. Usually that’s the bit I dread, because I just don’t like to meet the neighbours when I’m out with Jenny. (Actually, I just don’t like the neighbours. Period. But that’s another story.)
Well, today is a beautiful summer day: blue sky, sunshine all day, nice and warm. But what I suddenly noticed while walking down the street was that there was not one kid outside. And not many adults, either.
Now, thinking back to my own childhood (which isn’t quite THAT long ago, really), we seem to have spend most of our days outside, playing, riding our bikes, building treehouses or rafts down on the river (that usually fell apart after five minutes immersion in water) and other such things. We came back home when we were hungry or it got dark – whatever happened first. And if we had wandered away too far from home to make it back before dark, we just hitched a ride with anybody who happend to be along in a car.
Our parents usually didn’t have a clue where we were at any given moment. They couldn’t even call the parents of our friends to find out if we were there, because most of us didn’t have a phone at home back then (mobile phones, of course, weren’t even invented). Of course, they had other things on their minds anyway, because back then it was totally normal for both parents to work full-time. The concept of a stay-at-home-mom was totally foreign to me up until my early twenties.
Today, letting your kids run wild like that is unthinkable. There are just too many dangers out there for children. I sometimes pity today’s children, because most of them haven’t got any idea how exciting and wonderful a real childhood could be.
Most children today, at least in my experience, don’t seem to play outside all that much anymore. And if they do, they are supervised by an adult (come on, how much fun can that be?). They don’t ride their bikes on the road anymore, because of the heavy traffic. If they roam the countryside, they have to take their mobile phone with them, so mom can check on them and make sure they don’t lie somewhere with a broken leg (we used to take friends along for that purpose).
But the really sad part is, that most kids nowadays don’t seem to miss all that freedom at all. They actually prefer to stay indoors, watching dumb television shows and play even dumber computer games, or hang out in shopping centres doing god-knows-what, probably send each other a gazillion text messages over their expensive mobile phones or download some new ringtones or go shop-lifting, if they feel bored.
They don’t know what it feels like to climb a big tree and then have to jump down and sprain your ankle, because you realized too late that there was no way to climb down safely again. Or to be caught outside in a thunderstorm, knowing you will be soaking wet before you make it back home. They will never spend hours planning and plotting a big raid on a cherry orchard in summer, only to be chased off the premises by the big, ferocious dog of the owner after 2 minutes. They won’t bring home snakes and frogs and let them have a go at each other on the kitchen floor, while their mother sits on the table and screams at them to get these things the fuck out of her kitchen (well, ok, I guess, most mothers will actually be happily missing out on that experience, but it was a hoot for me, I can tell you).
It’s a sad, sad world nowadays, is all I’m saying. I definitely wouldn’t wanna be a kid today.