What kids don't do anymore

Spoken like someone who has never been out of the Newark area or Route 1 & 9 where all the warehouses are. South of I-195, you'll find plenty of farms.

Actually, I have... Just seem to end up in the warehouse garden waaaaaay too much. :(

There's a small strip of western Jersey that's very pretty, and the south/east portion down toward Atlantic City (but not ALL the way) has a lot more wide-open space, if a bit flat and boring (kind of Ohio-ish). But I still ain't ever seen any good-sized (flower, not warehouse) gardens there...
 
I'm trying to get my college stu daughters to read the (Chaucer's Canterbury...)Miller's Tale. It's like pulling teeth.

One is at an IVY, can yo bereeve this?
 
I was a Dismantler.
Kindred spirit here, Dave. I remember being dispatched to the basement to winterize the lawn mower at about age 11. I came upstairs with the piston in my hand to ask my Dad some questions....

Like I suspect is true for you, I became very good at dismantling without breaking. Anything doesn't work, let's take it apart and see if we can figure it out. Relatively certain I wouldn't make the problem worse, my Dad gave me my head on these things. I won't bore you with the tales of all the things I was able to fix.

But the digital age has put an end to this as a useful skill. Not completely, but more so than I would like!

-Skip
 
Like I suspect is true for you, I became very good at dismantling without breaking. Anything doesn't work, let's take it apart and see if we can figure it out. Relatively certain I wouldn't make the problem worse, my Dad gave me my head on these things.

My dad always said: "It's already broke right? So you're already out the money for the repair or replacement. You might as well go ahead and try to fix it. If you fail, you learned something and it's not going to cost anything. If you succeed, then you learned something and you can use the money for something else."

Once you have that attitude, after a while there's no such thing as broke. Everything is in a state of either working or degrees of not quite working and fixable even if it's in a million mangled pieces.

I won't bore you with the tales of all the things I was able to fix.

Yea. The success rate is too high to even start listing them off..and that's just so far this year at day 10.
 
They don't read books.

Few do, for sure. College students typically have to take "Composition 101" or "English Essentials" or something similarly named in their first semester. And many can't hack it because they can't read or write effectively. Not won't, but can't. Computers and television have made our world a visual one, and so reading text and creating a picture within the mind is a disappearing skill.

We kept our son away from the TV and computer as much as reasonable, and bought books and had a library membership. I even scrounged the used bookstores for the older Hardy Boys books, despite my own teacher's scorn of such formula tales, and he read them several times. Got all 50 or so of the original series, all at low prices, and now they're worth something. As an adult now, he enjoys reading.

And I made sure he had tools and bits of wood and metal to fool with when he was small. Got his first power tools when he was 11 or so. And now he builds boats and stuff and fixes his own vehicles. His all-thumbs friends are all envious. All they can do is virtual stuff on their computers, while he goes camping in the real woods and boating on real water and 4x4ing in real mountains. And encounters real bears and deer and moose.

There seems to be a real longing among men for the lost adventures. None of us get enough of it.

An interesting and really funny book: Dave Barry's Book of Guys. He says that there are actually three sexes: women,, men, and guys. Guys are the folks that know stuff about fixing things around the house and on the car and about camping and fishing and shooting. Guys are the ones women swoon over. Men just wear nice clothes and work in clean offices and drive shiny SUVs. And they envy the guys:smile:

Dan
 
And I made sure he had tools and bits of wood and metal to fool with when he was small. Got his first power tools when he was 11 or so. And now he builds boats and stuff and fixes his own vehicles. His all-thumbs friends are all envious. All they can do is virtual stuff on their computers, while he goes camping in the real woods and boating on real water and 4x4ing in real mountains. And encounters real bears and deer and moose.

I was about to go on a backpacking trip and a guy I knew said why go through the effort and misery. He could pull up a 3D topo map of any valley anywhere on his computer and that's the same thing as hiking there without the rain, bugs, dirt and the extremely high risk of being eaten by bears. It wasn't a joke, he really believed what he was saying. I just told him to use his computer to pull up the smell of a valley full of flowers or try to breathe clean air for a change. As I was walking away, all I heard was there was nothing to do in a forest and flowers are for sissies since real men like the smell of burned diesel fuel in the mornings.

There seems to be a real longing among men for the lost adventures.

Sad thing is that they sit around and read, um, watch tv and movies about adventures then wish they could have an adventure. If they would simply turn off the technology and go for a walk, they could actually live life instead of being a four times removed observer.

An interesting and really funny book: Dave Barry's Book of Guys. He says that there are actually three sexes: women,, men, and guys. Guys are the folks that know stuff about fixing things around the house and on the car and about camping and fishing and shooting. Guys are the ones women swoon over. Men just wear nice clothes and work in clean offices and drive shiny SUVs. And they envy the guys

Actually social status is everything. As a society on the whole they tend to swoon over the men who give the illusion and who publicly insult the guys who have the actual abilities to do things. When push comes to shove though, the safe money is on the guy with the wrenches that gets a phone call when a car is giving someone trouble...though quite often, it's the image men that get the call first since they're the most desired. Of course it's always fun when the hot shot mouthy men desperately call up the guy with the wrench for help...about a week after insulting insulting said guy.
That's not always the situation however the percentage is pretty significant and the behavior pattern goes the same way for both sexes.
 
maybe some still do these things...I would be happy to hear it still happens.

Summer
-camping out....in the backyard. (flashlights, comic books, snacks, bugs, story telling, smell of canvas)
-swimming....all afternoon in the neighbor's pool (throwing balls around, breath-holding competitions, making a huge whirlpool by everyone walking fast around the perimeter, smell of chlorine and suntan oil, beat red skin, sneaking peeks when girls have skinny dip night!.. never saw anything; they were always on to us)
-hotdogs on the barbeque, mm that smell
-driving to the next town for DQ...about 3X per year!
-biking all round the neighborhood with our gang, the nearby forest, trails around farmers fields, the park, along the creek - all very rough and undeveloped.
-yes the tree fort, up in the canopy of the mature forest. 500# of scavenged lumber hoisted by rope it felt like a hundred feet up.
Winter
-building huge snow forts, stockpiling snowballs, then the raid.
-'snowmobiling' with the circa 1964 single cylinder, 20mph Ski-doo
-skating on the pond at the park (my toes have still not recovered)
-street hockey or just shooting at the garage door with tennis balls or those foam pucks.
-the sound of the snowplow going by...constantly
-walking to school, wondering if we would ever actually make it through the blizzard and hip-high drifts, path obliterated from view in middle of field.
-tingling extremities! Then wet, the rest of the time.
 
Spoken like someone who has never been out of the Newark area or Route 1 & 9 where all the warehouses are. South of I-195, you'll find plenty of farms. Summers in vineland were great for good food. I never paid more than 50¢ for a head of lettuce in season, 0r 25¢ for a huge eggplant or butternut squash. Sugary sweet corn was 12/$1, and it tasted better than the stuff that's crossed with the industrial corn grown in NE. It is easy to get fruit and tomatoes in season at reasonable prices in southern NJ...and it would keep for more than 2 days before growing mold.

You got it my friend! mmm sweet Jersey Corn, the best tomatos and peaches anywhere!
 
maybe some still do these things...I would be happy to hear it still happens.

Summer
-camping out....in the backyard. (flashlights, comic books, snacks, bugs, story telling, smell of canvas)

Finding a tent made of oiled canvas these days would be something indeed. All synthetics now. No smell other than that left behind by the neighbor's tomcat...


Dan
 
I'm not sure that parents these days are any different as a whole. I grew up in the 60s and knew kids whose parents would make them call home every time they got somewhere and who wouldn't let them do things that I was allowed to do. Plus, many of the things I did without my parents' knowledge and I'm pretty sure after reading a lot of these accounts that other kids did too. Somehow I think this is more looking at the past through rose colored glasses.

They sure are different. we lived in the City South West Philly. My mom told me stories that when I was an infant 1963-64 She would go to the market and take me in my pram ( no strollers back then Prams were the Caddys of strollers) and she would park me in the pram outside the market and do her shopping inside. AND get this thats what all the moms did. There were several strollers and prams parked out front of the market. Man can you imagine doing that today?
 
They sure are different. we lived in the City South West Philly. My mom told me stories that when I was an infant 1963-64 She would go to the market and take me in my pram ( no strollers back then Prams were the Caddys of strollers) and she would park me in the pram outside the market and do her shopping inside. AND get this thats what all the moms did. There were several strollers and prams parked out front of the market. Man can you imagine doing that today?


My mother did the same -- in Brooklyn and Quebec City.

I've asked her if maybe she and another -- far wealthier-- distracted mother may have switch carriages one day. She always says, "I don't think so... can't be sure..."

:eek:
 
They don't read books.
I think that may be true of some, just like when I was a kid I knew lots of kids that hated reading. I know my niece loves to read, we often read the same books so that we can talk about them. She had me recently read the Twilight series and I am having her read Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.
 
They don't read books.
Certainly not nearly as much as I used to before college and especially grad school. I've had to read SO many books that I can't usually stand it anymore! I think time spent in school and enjoying books are inversely related....
 
They don't read books.

Oh man Bruce my daughter goes through books like 100LL through a Baron. She loves em.


I'm lucky that my wife has read to our kids every night for almost 12 years now. The result is that both kids love to read and most importantly are excellent readers. They are homeschooled, and both read 4-5 grades higher than their age peers at "regular school".
 
Kids don't walk to/from school very much anymore, either. I live on a street that directly connects to an elementary and jr high school. You wouldn't believe the traffic in the morning and afternoon when all the minivans swarm.
 
Kids don't walk to/from school very much anymore, either. I live on a street that directly connects to an elementary and jr high school. You wouldn't believe the traffic in the morning and afternoon when all the minivans swarm.
The kids in my neighborhood take the yellow bus just like I did and I see them standing out there without any adult supervision.
 
The kids in my neighborhood take the yellow bus just like I did and I see them standing out there without any adult supervision.

I live too close to the schools for the bus - the school district only provides them for students that live more than a mile from the elementary school and more than 2 miles from jr high. It's that 1 mile radius that pretty much does it. Unless the kid's house is less than a block or two (or within sight of the school), everybody seems to drive their kids instead of kicking them out the door and making them walk. Like I had to do - in the snow - uphill both ways ---
 
An interesting and really funny book: Dave Barry's Book of Guys. He says that there are actually three sexes: women,, men, and guys. Guys are the folks that know stuff about fixing things around the house and on the car and about camping and fishing and shooting. Guys are the ones women swoon over. Men just wear nice clothes and work in clean offices and drive shiny SUVs. And they envy the guys:smile:

Ahhh, the Guide to Guys. Friggin' hilarious. Here's an example of what's in it - The Guyness Quotient quiz:

1. Alien beings from a highly advanced society visit the Earth, and you are the first human they encounter. As a token of intergalactic friendship, they present you with a small but incredibly sophisticated device that is capable of curing all disease, providing an infinite supply of clean energy, wiping out hunger and poverty, and permanently eliminating oppression and violence all over the entire Earth. You decide to:
A. Present it to the president of the United States.
B. Present it to the secretary general of the United Nations.
C. Take it apart.

2. As you grow older, what lost quality of your youthful life do you miss the most?
A. Innocence.
B. Idealism.
C. Cherry bombs.

3. When is it okay to kiss another male?
A. When you wish to display simple and pure affection without regard for narrow-minded social conventions.
B. When he is the pope. (Not on the lips.)
C. When he is your brother and you are Al Pacino and this is the only really sportsmanlike way to let him know that, for business reasons, you have to have him killed.

4. What about hugging another male?
A. If he's your father and at least one of you has a fatal disease.
B. If you're performing the Heimlich maneuver. (And even in this case, you should repeatedly shout: "I am just dislodging food trapped in this male's trachea! I am not in any way aroused!")
C. If you're a professional baseball player and a teammate hits a home run to win the World Series, you may hug him provided that (1) He is legally within the basepath, (2) Both of you are wear- ing protective cups, and (3) You also pound him fraternally with your fist hard enough to cause fractures.

5. Complete this sentence: A funeral is a good time to...
A. ...remember the deceased and console his loved ones.
B. ...reflect upon the fleeting transience of earthly life.
C. ...tell the joke about the guy who has Alzheimer's disease and cancer.

6. In your opinion, the ideal pet is:
A. A cat.
B. A dog.
C. A dog that eats cats.

7. You have been seeing a woman for several years. She's attractive and intelligent, and you always enjoy being with her. One leisurely Sunday afternoon the two of you are taking it easy-- you're watching a football game; she's reading the papers--when she suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, tells you that she thinks she really loves you, but she can no longer bear the uncertainty of not knowing where your relationship is going. She says she's not asking whether you want to get married; only whether you believe that you have some kind of future together. What do you say?
A. That you sincerely believe the two of you do have a future, but you don't want to rush it.
B. That although you also have strong feelings for her, you cannot honestly say that you'll be ready anytime soon to make a lasting commitment, and you don't want to hurt her by holding out false hope.
C. That you cannot believe the Jets called a draw play on third and seventeen.

8. Okay, so you have decided that you truly love a woman and you want to spend the rest of your life with her-sharing the joys and the sorrows, the triumphs and the tragedies, and all the adventures and opportunities that the world has to offer, come what may. How do you tell her?
A. You take her to a nice restaurant and tell her after dinner.
B. You take her for a walk on a moonlit beach, and you say her name, and when she turns to you, with the sea breeze blowing her hair and the stars in her eyes, you tell her.
C. Tell her what?

9. One weekday morning your wife wakes up feeling ill and asks you to get your three children ready for school. Your first question to her is:
A. "Do they need to eat or anything?"
B. "They're in school already?"
C. "There are three of them?"

10. When is it okay to throw away a set of veteran underwear?
A. When it has turned the color of a dead whale and developed new holes so large that you're not sure which ones were originally intended for your legs.
B. When it is down to eight loosely connected underwear molecules and has to be handled with tweezers.
C. It is never okay to throw away veteran underwear. A real guy checks the garbage regularly in case somebody--and we are not naming names, but this would be his wife--is quietly trying to discard his underwear, which she is frankly jealous of, because the guy seems to have a more intimate relationship with it than with her.

11. What, in your opinion, is the most reasonable explanation for the fact that Moses led the Israelites all over the place for forty years before they finally got to the Promised Land?
A. He was being tested.
B. He wanted them to really appreciate the Promised Land when they finally got there.
C. He refused to ask directions.

12. What is the human race's single greatest achievement?
A. Democracy.
B. Religion.
C. Remote control.

How to Score: Give yourself one point for every time you picked answer "C." A real guy would score at least 10 on this test. In fact, a real guy would score at least 15, because he would get the special five-point bonus for knowing the joke about the guy who has Alzheimer's disease and cancer.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
 
-walking to school, wondering if we would ever actually make it through the blizzard and hip-high drifts, path obliterated from view in middle of field.

Slowly making your way outside in bad weather...but when the weather is spectacularly awful, you're out the door right then no matter how bad it is. The worse the better....

A 20-30ft high vertical drop off at the edge of a cliff into deep water with the only place to get out about a quarter mile away is considered fun, not dangerous.


Laying in the grass with a bunch of other airport kids at the very end of the dirt runway watching the planes go over you really low as they land. Saturday social gatherings at the airport, cars are lined up down both sides of the runway watching planes do their thing. Planes land, stop on the runway, switch out pax then take off again. Of course kids are crossing the runway between planes because the hotdogs are being cooked on the other side. Just stay where you won't get hit by the occasional groundloopers.
 
Planes land, stop on the runway, switch out pax then take off again. Of course kids are crossing the runway between planes because the hotdogs are being cooked on the other side. Just stay where you won't get hit by the occasional groundloopers.
Sounds like Gastons.
 
I was about to go on a backpacking trip and a guy I knew said why go through the effort and misery. He could pull up a 3D topo map of any valley anywhere on his computer and that's the same thing as hiking there without the rain, bugs, dirt and the extremely high risk of being eaten by bears. It wasn't a joke, he really believed what he was saying. I just told him to use his computer to pull up the smell of a valley full of flowers or try to breathe clean air for a change. As I was walking away, all I heard was there was nothing to do in a forest and flowers are for sissies since real men like the smell of burned diesel fuel in the mornings.



Sad thing is that they sit around and read, um, watch tv and movies about adventures then wish they could have an adventure. If they would simply turn off the technology and go for a walk, they could actually live life instead of being a four times removed observer.



Actually social status is everything. As a society on the whole they tend to swoon over the men who give the illusion and who publicly insult the guys who have the actual abilities to do things. When push comes to shove though, the safe money is on the guy with the wrenches that gets a phone call when a car is giving someone trouble...though quite often, it's the image men that get the call first since they're the most desired. Of course it's always fun when the hot shot mouthy men desperately call up the guy with the wrench for help...about a week after insulting insulting said guy.
That's not always the situation however the percentage is pretty significant and the behavior pattern goes the same way for both sexes.
I think this sums it up pretty well.
I know many of my friends don't understand my infatuation with flying. They would rather sit home and be bored - or - go somewhere and be entertained. They can't understand how someone would want to fly a 'little airplane' to and all over Alaska. People need to get out and do things more to satisfy their longing for adventure.
 
I live too close to the schools for the bus - the school district only provides them for students that live more than a mile from the elementary school and more than 2 miles from jr high. It's that 1 mile radius that pretty much does it. Unless the kid's house is less than a block or two (or within sight of the school), everybody seems to drive their kids instead of kicking them out the door and making them walk. Like I had to do - in the snow - uphill both ways ---

Yep -- I never rode on a school bus in 12 years of school....
 
Yep -- I never rode on a school bus in 12 years of school....

On second thought, I'm going to give today's kids somewhat of a pass on this. There are too many stories in the news about kids that either never make it to school or never make it home.

I never had any hesitation, or my parents either, when I was a kid about riding a bike cross town, or even taking a bus around town, alone. Times are different and I didn't let my kids do a lot of the things I did.
 
On second thought, I'm going to give today's kids somewhat of a pass on this. There are too many stories in the news about kids that either never make it to school or never make it home.

I never had any hesitation, or my parents either, when I was a kid about riding a bike cross town, or even taking a bus around town, alone. Times are different and I didn't let my kids do a lot of the things I did.

We definately had more knowledge of where they were and how they were getting there.

I had such total freedom as a teen looking back it's scary -- I took the local bus to Manhattan for the day, get home 8 PM or so, "Where did you go?"

"Around..."

Despite such freedom, I didn't abuse it. Strange...
 
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I live too close to the schools for the bus - the school district only provides them for students that live more than a mile from the elementary school and more than 2 miles from jr high. It's that 1 mile radius that pretty much does it. Unless the kid's house is less than a block or two (or within sight of the school), everybody seems to drive their kids instead of kicking them out the door and making them walk. Like I had to do - in the snow - uphill both ways ---

I did that in high school. No kidding. My kids thought I was full of it until they went to college in the same town. Then they learned. The uphill in the morning was downhill in the afternoon, and vice versa. I had to go over a hill. :D
 
I'm trying to get my college stu daughters to read the (Chaucer's Canterbury...)Miller's Tale. It's like pulling teeth.

One is at an IVY, can yo bereeve this?

And they made it that far without reading Chaucer???? I didn't think that was possible.

I read Chaucer. I don't remember Chaucer, but I read him. That's gotta count for something.:smile:
 
I'm trying to get my college stu daughters to read the (Chaucer's Canterbury...)Miller's Tale. It's like pulling teeth.

One is at an IVY, can yo bereeve this?
You cannot get them to read The Miller's Tale? When Mother caught me reading it in high school, she threw a fit. Goodness, I learned a lot from that tale.

Have they any idea what the tale is about? I suppose you want them to read it in the original and not a translation? That is very difficult.
 
On second thought, I'm going to give today's kids somewhat of a pass on this. There are too many stories in the news about kids that either never make it to school or never make it home.

I never had any hesitation, or my parents either, when I was a kid about riding a bike cross town, or even taking a bus around town, alone. Times are different and I didn't let my kids do a lot of the things I did.

Meanwhile I was raised in Manhattan. We walked, rollerbladed, rode our bicycles, rode the city bus, and rode the subway... everywhere. Including bikes/rollerblades on the streets, in the rain, surrounded by taxis.

People are too concerned. Times may have changed, but parents are far too concerned. Then they end up with sheltered kids who don't know how to handle the real world. Yes, bad things might happen. That's how life works. It sucks when it happens, but taking away living to preserve life doesn't make much sense.

Despite such freedom, I didn't abuse it. Strange...

Same here, but I don't think it strange. I was given appropriate freedom, but had boundaries and those boundaries were clear. I suspect it was similar for you. Kids don't break rules when they're well understood, and especially if they're reasonable.
 
People are too concerned. Times may have changed, but parents are far too concerned. Then they end up with sheltered kids who don't know how to handle the real world. Yes, bad things might happen. That's how life works. It sucks when it happens, but taking away living to preserve life doesn't make much sense.

But that doesn't mean it's easy.

I remember watching my 5-year old son climb a tree -- he was about 25 feet up and I knew that if he didn't place his foot on the right branch, he was coming down, and it could be fatal.

I had to turn away and bite my tongue. Every parental instinct screamed, "Tell him to get down! Better yet, go get him!"

It only got worse -- roller blades, dirt bikes, various firearms, arrows, knives -- you name it.

Of course he was trained and corrected when he did something unsafe or dumb, but at some point the parent has to take the long view and look away, rather than interrupt the learning process.

It's very much like flight instruction -- you know they need to know so much more, but you let them go and bite your tongue and hope and pray it isn't fatal.
 
It's very much like flight instruction -- you know they need to know so much more, but you let them go and bite your tongue and hope and pray it isn't fatal.

And generally, it isn't.
 
People are too concerned. Times may have changed, but parents are far too concerned. Then they end up with sheltered kids who don't know how to handle the real world. Yes, bad things might happen. That's how life works. It sucks when it happens, but taking away living to preserve life doesn't make much sense.

That's why I decided to excuse the kids, in this situation, from being blamed for "What kids don't do anymore". Most of those decisions are made by parents. But, the end result is the same - most kids jut don't do stuff like that anymore.
 
That's what we called it. Never really thought about what it meant. It wasn't 'til years and years later it dawned on me.

I wouldn't read too much into it - using the word "queer" to describe a homosexual is actually a fairly recent thing (in the grand scheme of kids trying to tackle the guy with the ball).

I always took it to mean "Different" as in "We have the ball, he doesn't," which is the actual meaning of the word - "Strange or Different"
 
And generally, it isn't.

Right -- but no parent can escape those terrible "what if...?" thoughts.

Parents know that when your child is injured or sick, you would do anything to take it off them and put it on yourself.

It's a very short drive between callous, cautious, and overprotective, and every parent has to figure out where to stop for each child in each situation.

When Nathaniel was 2 1/2, we all went to a cabin owned by the company I was working for at the time. It was dark winter Friday night when we arrived, and we were all busy unloading the car, when I heard "Where's Nathaniel?!"

I ran outside, spotted some footprints in the snow, and followed them all the way out back, where I found him standing on the edge of the stream out back, that was now a torrent of ice and dark water, overflowing from the day's snowmelt.

He was about a foot and a half from certain death, and I felt like an absolute failure as a father -- how did I let him out of my sight?

That moment still comes back from time to time and still sends chills up my spine.

Sure, sometimes parents make mistakes, are too cautious, too protective -- but the potential outcome of not enough caution, not enough protection are too terrible to contemplate.
 
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