I remember those adventurous days when a large three foot tall steel drum, cut in half, formed the best boat you have ever seen, to navigate an imaginary river. It would rock from side to side with our bodies flung left to right in quick unison as the "boat" shifted, inch by inch across a small area of the dirt yard strewn with large pebbles which, in our minds, were great big rocks that persisted in ramming our "boat". Squeals of "look out" and "we're going to fall out and drown" could be heard as we desperately clung to the side of the "boat" as it nearly tipped over completely, spilling us onto the gritty dirt.
This was not a scene on a farm or even a large plot of land but in the backyard of our suburban homes under the sprawling branches of a great fir tree which never allowed the grass to grow beneath its shaded canopy. Its branches swaying with the breeze causing wavy shadows of "water" to flow on the patch that became our rippling river.
That was a day in my childhood. Then TV arrived but that did not stop my children. They too played their imaginary games despite the TV's enticing "He Man", "Thunder Cats" and "The Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles" or "My Little Pony" programs. Yes, they watched and collected those figurines with their castles and paraphernalia and they did play indoors with these characters with their friends but they played outdoors too.
They climbed the trees in the garden and scrambled up six foot walls and walked "tight rope" along them and they played endlessly in their sandpit. The sandpit was a hole in the ground two feet deep, three foot wide and five foot long filled with builder's sand. One time when the sandpit was low on sand, we filled it with water and they had a mud bath and a "mud throwing fight".
All these outdoor activities were in the heat of summer with no thought of staying indoors in the coolness of air-conditioning.
Do children still play this way? I have to wonder. I have lived in Florida for sixteen years and have never seen children playing outside in an imaginative way. Yes they have swum in the pool or ridden on their bikes or shot hoops or flipped on skateboards but none have climbed trees or built imaginative boats or raced each other in wooden boxes with rickety wheels pretending to be Spiderman, He Man, Tinkerbell or a racing car hero.
Is it because of lawsuits and threats from child services if kids hurt themselves and fear by their parents that they would be accused of child abuse or perhaps homeowner's associations that want to keep the neighborhood straight-laced and proper? I really have no idea except to say that I would find it rather sad if that were to be the case. Sad that children may no longer learn from creating something from nothing, something in which the mind and the whole body can participate using only their imaginations. Are these creative imaginative adventures dead for children of the 21st century?