MY CONNECTIONS TO PLAY

"My Connections to Play."

“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play most certainly is the father”.  Roger von Oech

I think this quote about play truly describes the role of play in my early childhood. I have two older brothers and together we were always creating something, whether wooden go-carts made from pallets and old tires or a covered community made under the brushes of the undeveloped acreage that was in my neighborhood. When I played with my sister we were always designing and creating fashionable wardrobes for our dolls, or for ourselves including wooden footwear from leftover scrap wood that we found in the yard of a nearby woodworking shop.  

The second quote that I believe speaks about what play meant to me as a child would be “At the end of the day your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling”. As children my siblings and I were fortunate to be able to play outdoors regularly, and sometimes all day. During the summer time, I would go ‘exploring’ sometimes miles away from my home with my older brother. We grew up poor so many times we were barefoot when we went outside. So definitely my feet would be dirty but there must have been a sparkle in my eyes as I reflected on all the exotic fruits that we found in the orchards of a deserted mansion that was a short distance from where we lived.

One toy that was a hit during my childhood was the hoola hoop. My sister and I were very skilled with this toy. I remember the competitions we held to see who can keep it up the longest and the tricks we learned to do with the hoop. The good thing was as we played we were also working out and keeping our bodies fit.     

    

Another favorite form of play was the skipping rope. We would skip to the rhythm of nursery rhymes and other diddles that we made up. Sometimes one child would jump by themselves but mostly we all jumped together which was more fun for me.

One last game that we played consistently as children was hopscotch. The good thing about hop-scotch was it did not require our parents to buy anything for us to play the game. We would use the limestone ‘chalky’ rocks to trace out the game and play would commence.

   

During my childhood play was an essential part of life. Neighborhood children came together to play practically every day. Even my mom and aunts would come and play with us sometimes. I can remember one of my aunts having a ‘jacks’ competition with us girls to see who would win. Surprisingly she still had a lot of skills, and if I can remember correctly, she won the competition.

Children play so much differently today than the way I played as a child. Children were freer to move around their neighborhoods safely and parents felt more secure letting their children play outdoors even in the poorer areas. Today children explore the world wide web but we explored our neighborhoods. Children spend much of their time playing indoors watching the television or using their hand-held gadgets, but we spent most of our time outside. Television programming started later in the afternoons so we were compelled to go outdoors.  The games children play today are mostly passive, but our games required a lot of physical activity. 

I think this quote expresses so exquisitely the way I feel about the world today. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of going to work every day we got to go and play with the people we love?