Are We Having Fun Yet? What's at Play with Play.

     I love watching kids be kids.  And when I say that, I mean watching them in real life and not on some monitor or screen.  But when kids are kids, they seem to have more and more trouble divorcing anything really worthwhile from that monitor or screen.  As simply as I can state it:  A generation is now growing whose concept of reality and its worth is engulfed in visual stimulation.  Why bother with something that doesn't relate to visual media?--they might assume.

     This hit me (almost literally) as I was dodging some pre-teen boys during a recent stroll around the park.  But no worries.  It was a breath of fresh air to witness their enthusiasm for something that:  A. didn't have to be "booted up," B. didn't require a remote control and negotiations on who could use it, and C. was a product of their own intelligence, creativity, and teamwork.  You see, the boys had built a strange but admirable "go-cart" of sorts out of what looked like an old car seat and a skateboard.  One at a time could sit on it and ride while the others pushed.  Doing so, of course, would lead to an eventual wipeout, and they almost wiped me out along with them, but that's O.K.  I was impressed that the thing actually worked and that they were engaged a kind of play that is more "raw," simple, and hands on. 

     Yes, I now have to come to the cliche you're expecting at this point and say that they were playing like we used to when we were kids.  But my reflections of fashioning similar contraptions and engaging in the kind of play we did in Scott Underwood's backyard in the 1970s suddenly got jostled out of my head when I heard something shouted out by one of those boys right after he'd wiped out on the "go-cart."  No, he wasn't screaming out from injury.  It was something perhaps worse.  I heard him yell, "I wish I could put this on YouTube!" 

     Well, there you have it.  I know that all of us, young and old, want to record memories on video or picture--"to capture those Kodak moments."  Even though I wanted to use that as a teaching opportunity for the kid, I instead stayed within my propensity, which is to mind my own business, assuming that kids are as interested in my wisdom as much as I was interested in listening to grownups when I was their age.  Assuming (correctly or incorrectly) that you also would be tempted to admonish the kid, what would you want to tell him?  It just seemed like it wasn't enough that he was having fun; he wasn't having fun in quite the right way, with quite the right mindset.

     Usually one's blog or commentary stops at this point to insert statistics proving how too much TV and computer time has diminished physical playtime to the great detriment to our youth.  For such stats, I'll divert to the important efforts of others--from Michelle Obama to one of several relevant blogs by Albert Mohler.  But we're now beyond needing such confirmation.  The effects of a media-saturated culture on children has been more than adequately proven with authority, no?

     I suppose what it gets down to is that to enjoy moments in life to the fullest, we have to learn actually to enjoy "the real moment itself."  Child's play, at its best, brings moments of rapture.  They are usually too few and far between, and they don't last nearly long enough.  That's why one of the first things they learn to demand is, "Again!" I wanted to tell the boys not to think about putting their fun on YouTube, no matter how much viewers, like family and friends, might enjoy watching the spectacle.

     There really are amazing things that exist far beyond the bounds of visual communication and the chronicles by camera--no matter the skill of any picture taker.  Among these amazing things is child's play.  Instead of pictures, its enchantment can only reside most powerfully in the subjective experience of the boy or girl experiencing it.  Second best is the memory of it, if it can be recalled at all.  The Peter Pan in us seems to fly away.  I suppose that once we get so old that we can't recall the ecstasy, all we can do is unplug our silly gadgets and really just play again . . . somehow.
     Perhaps the next day I visit that park, I'll be riding their crazy looking go-cart and try to avoid smashing into them.  The boys will then smile at me.  Maybe they'll learn a lesson that quickly passes their eyes and reaches their character.