Well, duh!

Seems like all the child rearing experts have discovered that letting kids be kids is now the way to go. Scheduling their lives has gone too far! So... there's an article in the PI's "getaways" insert today which describes one group of mom's experiment in providing "unstructured play time" for their 6 year olds. They all load into their vans and head to Seward Park from 10am to 3pm. One mom for each kid. And the PI photog. One of the moms hands out xerox maps to all at the parking lot. It was a pretty scary time, alright. One kid ran off a bit and two cell phone calls were required to reel him in. Blood from scratches, blisters, etc. was drawn three(!) times. Author deems the afternoon a success, with caveats and suggestions for "next time". Shheesh. For the record, here is some of the real spontaneous after-the-chores stuff we did in my formative years:

- Played "guns". We didn't go "bang, bang" or "pow, pow"; we made a noise that was comething like "qchiewch, qchiewch" We "qchiewed" around a lot, sometimes as cowboys and probably more often as Marines.

- Seasonally stole cherries at the Kosneys and/or Swanson places. They had especially early varieties we don't see much of anymore.

- Played marbles. Both "pots" and "chaseys". Carl Samples was a real shark and had a HUGE stash of winnings. It was not unheard of that some kids feelings got hurt over marble games.

- Played board games - "Touring", "Monopoly", "Sorry", "Clue", "Parcheesi". This was a co-educational rainy day character building activity. But we didn't know it 'til now.

- Played baseball (softball, actually) and to a lesser degree, basketball. This was also mostly co-ed. The Robel girls were damn good players.

- Raced "bugs" - soapbox cars - coasting on upper part of 36th and lower block of 40th. Ask me to show you my scar.

- Played cars.

- Messed around in the garages.

- Played "Kick the Can" and (especially) "Capture the Flag". This was an excellent place for these nightime games because there were large lots and we could be genuinely sneaky across difficult to defend boundaries. Co-educational activity.

- "Went down to the crick"

- "Went down to the lake"

No hovering moms. And no PI photographers, either.