Back in My Day

We hear all the time about the childhood that children no longer get to have. "Back in my day," the opinion piece will begin (even if exactly those words were not used), "we we run out the front door at dawn and wouldn't come back in until it was dinner time."

We hear this, because we can all kind of recognize that we are in the era of the ascendancy of the tablet, and of the tablet kid. Kids, like adults, have been captured by screens, and one just does not see possibly dangerous mobs of children roving the neighborhood as happened in ye olden days. The golden childhood of the nineties is passed.

So the lament so often goes.

I think (yes, another 'pinion) that this has a lot less to do with screens and laziness than it does with chemistry. Yes, that's right, son, chemistry.

You see, children are fissile material. A single child by itself is generally an inert lump, putting off little energy, save to whine about boredom. Parents, being only mortal, hear that the lump is bored for the 11th time, and decide to set them up with some salutary tablet time so that they can continue with whatever they were about. Now, now, you can't say that. We don't know they were just doom-scrolling.

 As we all know, fissile material never does nothin' interesting lest it is put in close contact with more of its kind. The radiant glow of that 90s childhood in your memory was powered by the joining together of many lumps into a runaway reactions. So the problem, I expect, is less a behavior issue than a fertility issue.

I say this, because over the last year I have enjoyed watching my children live the lost 90s childhood, and the magic ingredient is kids.

We got some new neighbors this year; a very happy addition of another solid Lutheran family. With their addition, there are something like 12 kids in a four house span, with more further down the street. I cannot say how many hours my kids spent running around with friends. I never always knew exactly where they were, but they were out running with the pack, and that was good.

It has continued this winter: this magical snowy winter. They would not go outside in this kind of cold if it were not for the impossible magnetism of joining the gang of kids who are out there digging, building snow forts, and the like.

And it is not that my kids are total strangers to the screen. My favorite television show is Bluey, and that is partially because it is probably the show I've seen the most of. My children are no strangers to mario kart, or even pokemon. Even so, rare are the times they are watching a movie, hear their friends are outside, and do not immediately bounce up to go join them.

I think the children are the key to this magic childhood that we have lost. If you would reclaim it, have some babies. Lots of babies. I know from my own childhood that even siblings can help generate the magic. It turns out that life is better with children. And that is especially true for children.

I would like a snappier ending, but I realized the snappy things have to be their own posts later, so I guess this is part one.