Complicated Fun
(Sorry Atomizer, this is not an ode to a local Twin Cities punk band that has somehow become something of a legend based on one song recorded twenty four years ago. And it's also not an ode to the Peter S. Scholtes music blog, although one is clearly overdue. Anyone with three Clash albums in his top 100 list must really know his stuff. )
Remember when you were a kid and your life, especially during the summer months, essentially consisted of play, interrupted on occasion by annoyances like breakfast, lunch, dinner, bed, and a forced bath every couple of days? I fondly recall summer days where we left our house after a quick breakfast (usually cereal with loads of sugar to get us jacked up for the long day ahead) returning only for lunch (if we remembered to eat) and dinner (this was mandatory) and then going out again après dinner for what we called "night games"?
Apparently life is much different for today's youth:
No scores, no official jerseys, no regulation equipment, no trophies, no performance anxiety, no parents on the sidelines berating kids or officials. Hardly any competition and hardly any fees.
"And the ultimate 'no' -- no stress," said Teri Dewey, organizer of Fun Summer Mondays.
The program is a casual get-together of about 27 second-graders from the same school for an hour each Monday evening. Activities run from June 16 to Aug. 11.
Fun Summer Mondays? Wow, one day a week to have fun. Not only one day a week ONE HOUR a week. I considered the entire summers of my childhood to be fun. Now kids get ONE HOUR a week? These are SECOND GRADERS we're talking about too. They're eight years old.
One Monday, the kids and some chaperoning parents fished from the Lake Harriet dock. Another week they played soccer. Tonight it's lawn games -- croquet, kick-the-can and tug-of-war. Coming up: swimming at the Richfield pool, basketball at a school gym and miniature golf.
Now doing stuff with your parents can be fun and all that but we did all of these things and more (much more) all by ourselves. We invented our games. We didn't need parents. That's part of the reason it was fun.
Dewey started Fun Summer Mondays a year ago, when her son Sam was about to enter first grade at Christ the King/St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic School in Minneapolis. She thought he'd like to get to know some of his future classmates in an informal setting -- just learning and playing the games her generation loved. She was right. The kids were wild about an hour of loosely organized play.
I don't doubt that these poor kids were quite wild about actually being to play for a change. A break from their regimented lives of sports practices, music lessons, and camps must seem like heaven.
Dewey is a former middle-school teacher. She said the loosely structured play is sometimes more of a stretch for her than it is for the children.
On "Wheels Night" last summer, for example, she was deciding how to lay out a bike course on a playground, which activity to do when, how to keep the fun flowing.
Nope, said dad Brian Kelley. Let's just let them play. Let the kids decide.
What a radical concept! Let the kids decide how to have fun?
On Wheels Night this year, Beth Perro-Jarvis gathered the flock of kids for a short -- very short -- pep talk. Wear your helmets, she instructed. Wrist guards are a good idea for skateboarders. "A broken wrist can ruin the summer." Oh, one other thing. "Try not to crash into each other. Now go have fun on your wheels."
Nag nag nag. Worry worry worry. Now go have fun? Crashing into each other on our bikes was probably one of the funnest things we could do. I remember my Mom's "pep talks" as we headed out the door, "Try to be home before dark and don't kill your brother".
After about 40 minutes, Dewey thought the kids were getting tired and, perhaps, reckless on their wheels. She switched them to kickball.
FORTY MINUTES? We rode our friggin’ bikes ALL FRIGGIN’ DAY! And we probably did get tired and we certainly were reckless (see fun concept of). But yet with no helmets, no parental supervision, and no structured playtime (an oxymoron if ever there was one) we managed to do just fine. We enjoyed our childhood. We had fun.
Will today's kids be able to say the same when they're adults?
