I, an 18 year old, have a question I'd like to ask everyone here who is under the age of 28 or so.
Do you recognize the thing in this image? Does looking at it it bring up childhood memories?
Memories of playing without supervision? Memories of playing dangerous, physical games that involved jumping, and running, and grabbing and pushing? Games that involved digging and building?
Those sort of childhood experiences seem to be slipping away. And I believe that "our" generation might be the last- what do you think?
In middle school I could bike to school without a parent. And I could bike to get ice cream after school without any supervision.
Now, my old middle school requests that every student takes the bus. And after school, every kid at the ice cream stand has a parent with them.
In middle school we could play in the woods (and on the pic related structure) at recess, with sticks and jumprope and physical contact games where you would try and grab people down the big metal slide...
Now, they have the playground be off limits during recess. They've banned jumprope after a kid tried strangling another kid. And contact games are banned in their entirety. And heavens forbid if you pick up a stick, let alone sharpen it on the pavement! (Something my friends and I used to do)
You might be thinking, "lol this faggoty 18-year-old is all grumpy about the future." But I'm worried - I'm worried that just in the short span of 10 years there have been such large changes in how kids are raised and the sorts of experiences they have.
So, do you have any good childhood stories? Any interesting ancedotes about how it was then and how it is now?