The Beauty of Childhood Boredom
Things that would never happen today to kids…
We had a paneled staton wagon in the 1970’s, and sometime my parents didn’t want to deal with three rambunctious kids running around a boring store. They’d leave us in the car with the windows down (we sound like dogs), and my siblings and I would wait while mom and dad bought carpet, purchased half a cow (I wondered how the poor cow felt and if it wished for a family that wanted all of her), or went inside a store to buy more insulation (we lived in snow country and our house needed more warmth).
Nobody stole us. Maybe it was due to the fighting and yelling coming from that station wagon. My brother and I would be tangling and hitting, while little sis screamed at us not to kill each other, so I’ll bet people strolled right on past us hoping to never own kids like us.
Except even if we had been perfectly behaved human specimens, kids just weren’t taken back then, or if they were I remained blissfully ignorant of the fact, as did my parents. Kids actually stayed in open cars back then in that more innocent time.
We had the freedom to roam the neighborhood, too. We would play all day together at someone’s house on our street, but if the sewers backed up after a rain we would run many streets away and swim in the waist high water. All the kids in Bayberry did it, and then we’d have to take a bath, which seemed odd to me after swimming in water.
How was I supposed to know what we kids were doing was unsanitary? All the moms let us race into that gross water, so it had to be safe; though now I’m glad I didn’t have open scrapes or wounds at the time.
I walked to the drugstore to buy my parents a wedding anniversary gift when I was only seven. I strolled out of our neighborhood and onto a very busy road to make my way to the store where I purchased a fake crystal ashtray, and no one batted an eye over this. Kids were safer back then, or my mom really did want me to be abducted. I like to think the former is true.
Kids today miss so much. They have so much packed into their little lives that they probably don’t have time to be bored. From school and then to piano lessons to soccer practice to dinner or a drive-thru (I loved those nights; no cooking!) to homework and video games. When do they play with the neighbors? When are they so bored they make little boats out of sticks and leaves after a rain and watch them float down the street?
When do the kids of today go off to find that large tree and climb it only to dare one another to jump down from the huge branch ten feet off the ground? When do they crawl through dry underground drains just to see where they wind up? I went first, and when the drain narrowed and I scraped my back on the cement, I finally conceded to turning around.
Only we couldn’t turn around as there simply was no room. We backed down a good quarter mile, and when I returned home disheveled with a torn shirt I simply told my mom I had been having an adventure.
Maybe that was expected back then. Maybe kids were so numerous, with most moms at home that vile people didn’t try to snatch a kid. Well, one person did try to lure me into his car, but it had to have been a joke, because he actually said, ‘Little girl, come here. I have some candy for you.’ So cliché.
The stranger in the red car didn’t know mom gave me fifty cents every morning to buy a candy bar from someone’s house on the walk home from school. Which begs the question, ‘Who sells candy bars to kids out of their house?’
My mom has even stranger stories that tell of greater freedoms and even more innocence. She was three, and my grandmother handed her an envelope with cash in it to deposit at the bank down the road a bit. Mom went there by herself (this would have been 1944), and she stood in line. Growing bored, she began to sing ‘Mares eat oats, and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy…”.
When my mother hadn’t returned after a half-hour, grandma went to the bank to see what happened. When she saw my mom rocking back and forth and singing, oblivious to the smiles of adults all around her, grandma realized she had walked in on a sweet moment. Mom stopped singing when she spied her own mother, and they took care of their bank transaction and strolled home together.
Where on earth would that happen today?
Our innocence is lost. Too many demented people inhabit this world, and too many don’t answer to a higher power or go to church. Maybe people were actually concerned about others’ perceptions of them. Maybe religion kept more people in check. All I know is those sweet days of naiveté are gone.
Maybe taking the phones and tablets from the kids for a while is a good thing. When my oldest went on a two week trip canoeing in Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota, she didn’t miss her phone. She slept under the stars, and each teen had to spend a day alone on a small island. The point was to be alone with their thoughts and their God, and that could take place in this sweet throwback to times long past.
When we went on a cruise, with my whole extended family, our phones were useless. We turned them off and placed them in the safe. What was wild about the trip was our inability to find each other, since we couldn’t just text them. I’d be lazing away in a lounge chair by one of the five pools, and my dad would walk past and tell me he had just seen my seventeen year old. I’d find my thirteen year old lounging by the pool, drinking a virgin Piña colada, and he’d be happy as a clam all on his own on the ship.
I think my kids loved that cruise, on the days of just sailing, precisely due to their ability to wander without us knowing exactly where they were. We all met up for dinner, so we’d see each other at least once a day. My husband and I hung out in in the same area each day, so the kids could find us if they wanted. They didn’t.
They wanted to be with their über cool aunt and uncle. Not boring mom and dad, and that’s okay. I’ll have to write about the topless beach soon. That was a trip. So was the nude beach. Ah, excursions were so enlightening. Anyway, the point is we had so much freedom back then.
As a young girl I cleaned the house every Saturday for hours after cartoons were over. I sort of wondered why my mom didn’t clean during the week, but I dare not ask lest I be given more cleaning to do. My husband told me he had the same experience a thousand miles away, so I think it’s something 1970s kids had to do.
And if we complained of boredom? We were handed a chore. So we swallowed boredom and jumped off trees, played in the woods, crawled through the sewers, rode our bikes everywhere, and had impromptu picnics with whatever we managed to sneak out of the house.
I miss those days. Not for me, since I lived them. I miss them for my grandchildren, and for the children of today. They are over scheduled, they don’t seem to pry their eyes off a screen long enough to learn how to communicate, and they don’t know the beauty of boredom. That’s what the kids need. More kids who are at home and who can find each other by heading outside and having an adventure of sorts.
I like today for so many reasons, but I still hope we make to back to innocence. There are still places on earth where it is found, but how do kids today find boredom? That’s what I wonder sometimes.
