Baseball Scrapbook Paper
Author: admin
For people 50 and over, do you feel that your life as a child was more conducive to…?
…creativity, and imagination than….
children being raised today?
When I was a child, the biggest thing was running out of the house on a Sat. morning after the Sat. morning cartoons, and playing outside with my friends.
We played dodgeball, baseball, hide and go seek, cops and robbers, etc. For girls there was jump rope, hopscotch. We played checkers, jacks, monopoly..
We also had hobbies – model kits, paper dolls, and we actually had to use our imaginations.
I remember having scrapbooks, where the only things in them were cut out of the Sunday ads in the paper. I used to put families together that way, cutting pictures out and writing out stories about them.
My sister and I used to actually write our own books, and do the illustrations with crayons.
Do you think the kids today are missing something we had?
A movie is no big deal anymore, they don’t have to go to the library, cause they have the computer, video games, etc.
Do you feel like it’s all too much sometimes?
My mother never allowed any of her children to utter those two dreaded words “I’m bored”. So since I was never allowed to say it, I never found out what it meant, so I never was! Does that make sense?
I was the only girl after the birth of 4 boys. Those boys were 20, 16 and 7 years older than I was. (The 16 year olds were times two — twins.) As a result the only brother I ever had any real contact with was the one that was 7 years older than me. But since he was “Joe Cool” he never wanted anything to do with a baby sister, so I never really got to know him either. Add to that the fact that both of my parents worked full time, and we lived out in the middle of nowhere, I ended up basically raising myself. That equated to a lot of “me” and “alone” time, that I had to fill with something.
Kar has already alluded to scrapbooks. I had a lot of those. But my real passion was (also like Kar) writing, and books. (Comes as a big surprise, I’m sure.) I read voraciously, and wrote journal after journal. I filled notebooks full of stories and poems. And then when I was 13 I struck gold. I found a horse magazine that had a children’s section in it, (“The Western Horseman”) and in that section was a pen-pal column. In that column kids from all over the U.S. posted their ages, names and addresses. Pretty soon I had dozens and dozens of pen pals all over the U.S. It was a big deal to exchange pictures, artwork in some cases, and of course stories. — To this day I still keep in touch with a few of them. However, with email and computers I’m afraid the children of today will never know the joy of ever receiving a “real” letter in the mail, filled with REAL handwriting and honest to goodness pictures taken with a camera that put the images on film.
I feel sorry for the kids of today. Yes they have the world at their finger tips, and they are privy to so much more “entertainment” than I ever was, but ironically I don’t think there’s a child alive today in our wonderful United States that doesn’t say “I’m bored” on a daily basis. To me that’s mind blowing!
But obviously in today’s world there’s little time for childhood anyway. I think that might be part of the problem. Kids are “dating” by the time they reach their teens. Hearing about a sexually active 12 year old is not unusual, especially in the inner cities. Wow — this question could take 1,000 different paths Kar!!! I know I’m all over the board because there’s so much to say. And yet — I’m speechless. (No fair saying “Thank god!”) :>
But in answer to your question, yes. I think the kids of today are in big trouble, because I don’t think there are really any “kids” left. They’re old before they reach middle school. God knows the average 10 year old knows more about “life” than I did at 16! And no, I wasn’t stupid. But being that “knowledgeable” at 10 is what robs our children of childhood. And unfortunately I see no way back. Life will keep pushing our kids at “fast forward”, and I see little hope in stopping it. Technology is fabulous yes, but how I would LOVE a chance to hit “rewind” and back up to the oh so “boring”, but oh so fulfilling 50′s! Maybe we could get our kids back. Or, put another way…..maybe kids could get their childhood back.
“And that’s all I’m going to say about that.” (Forrest Gump.)
Baseball Picture Scrapbook by MBI
