DRIVE-BY CHILDHOOD AND THE CLOSING OF THE “WILDERNESS”

In an article from the July 16th New York Review of Books entitled “Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness for Childhood,” Michael Chabon effectively laments the loss of the childhood spaces where kids traditionally become kids.

CHILDHOOD FROM THE SAFETY SEAT

The sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands have been abandoned in favor of a system of reservations—Chuck E. Cheese, the Jungle, the Discovery Zone: jolly internment centers mapped and planned by adults with no blank spots aside from doors marked staff only. When children roller-skate or ride their bikes, they go forth armored as for battle, and their parents typically stand nearby

…We schedule their encounters for them, driving them to and from one another's houses so they never get a chance to discover the unexplored lands between. If they are lucky, we send them out to play in the backyard, where they can be safely fenced in and even, in extreme cases, monitored with security cameras.

THE RAVINE AND OTHER PLACES

When the Author was a kid he and his friends knew their small town, the farm fields, and the abandoned gravel pit known as “The Ravine” intimately. We walked or rode bicycles or our minibikes. We lived a self-directed life as far outside of the imperious eyes of parents and other adults as was possible.

Skinned knees, sunburns and bug bites were the price of freedom and the explorative urges. And we did it all without anyone having there eye put out.

We went where we wanted, played ball every afternoon, and always came home for supper. Then we went back out again until dark, or later.

Chabon, who led a life of juvenile adventure, worries what adults might be unwittingly doing to their children’s sense of wonder and adventure. Chabon writes:

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go. Should I send my children out to play?

There is a small grocery store around the corner, not over two hundred yards from our front door. Can I let her ride there alone to experience the singular pleasure of buying herself an ice cream on a hot summer day and eating it on the sidewalk, alone with her thoughts? Soon after she learned to ride, we went out together after dinner, she on her bike, with me following along at a safe distance behind. What struck me at once on that lovely summer evening, as we wandered the streets of our lovely residential neighborhood at that after-dinner hour that had once represented the peak moment, the magic hour of my own childhood, was that we didn't encounter a single other child.

KIDS CAN STILL BE KIDS, NOT MALL RATS, IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!