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Child's Play

dirty kidsThe latest Atlantic Monthly magazine has a great story contemplating the idea that we coddle modern children too much, that we're WAYYYY overprotective compared to ye good olde days. Child abduction, one reason for our contemporary over-caution, isn't, statistically speaking, such a threat that we need to watch over our kids almost every minute of their waking lives, but we sort of do and that, the article posits, may not be the optimal path for child development. Especially regarding creativity and self-reliance.

Not having children I don't know if I'd kick my kids out of the house at daybreak to fend for themselves, after a hearty breakfast, of course, but that's exactly how I was treated as a kidling, and I somehow survived. In fact, I'd like to share one memorable moment of unsupervised excitement.

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The house we moved into when I was about nine years old featured Fort worth's Trinity River a mere six feet beyond the four-foot cyclone fence that framed our back yard. This was a wild and untamed part of the river, with steep 20-foot banks, massive cottonwood trees, and all manner of creepy-crawly-bitey critters lurking everywhere.

It was like Heaven.

Not long afterwards the city, or state, thought it best to civilize, nay sterilize, the river, in order to keep its fair citizens safe from the unpredictability all this nature, so they came in, cut down and burned all the trees, then dug a new course for the river, filling in the old one.

It was literally apocalyptic. (I would also like to add that once the vast meadow that bordered the river was demolished all the mice that lived there summarily invaded our home. That's when I got my first cat.)

On the other hand, our playground was now one vast sandbox, filled with real trucks and construction   equipment of all kinds. One day, a man rolled past our back gate in a bulldozer, scraping up a huge rolling mound of fresh earth. I, my little brother, and my older sister stood off to one side enjoying the show. I don't know whose idea it was but we all began launching ourselves into the pile of dirt, rolling and tumbling amongst the clods and rocks... and the bulldozer didn't stop. In fact, it seemed like the man running the machine was amused as this continued for about five minutes. Eventually he told us to knock it off and so we went looking for other mischief. We didn't consider this a remarkable event at the time, just an opportunity to relieve the boredom of a fall afternoon.

There was certainly the possibility for disaster in what we were doing and if I saw a child of mine attempting such an act today I'd probably have a minor coronary, but, to be honest, it wasn't half as dangerous as other things we got up to on the new Trinity River. But those are stories for another day.

=Lefty=

end rant



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