Old time play. What passtimes from your childhood will never be again?

[FreeJoe]

85. My kids to many things mentioned here

I'm not sure why people think many of these things have gone away. I live in the suburbs with my two middle-school aged kids and they do or have done many of the things listed here.

They both walked (or biked or scootered) to and from school almost every day from kindergarten through sixth grade. When they biked, they left their bikes there all day unlocked along with everyone else. On rainy days, it wasn't unusual for lots of people to just leave their bikes there overnight or even over the weekend. I can't say that none were ever stolen, but I never heard of it happening.

Saturday morning cartoons are gone, but that's because kids can watch them 24/7 with the proliferation of channels, DVRs, Netflix, etc. Mine even watched many of the same shows I watched (Loony Tunes, Speed Racer, Land of the Lost, Gilligan's Island, and Scooby Doo! all come to mind). I do miss the Saturday morning tradition, though.

My kids don't range as much as I did, but they still get around. They made the slightly over two miles each way walk to the store with a friend yesterday and blew their money on candy like I did when I was there age.

Balloon in a tube hasn't gone away. My wife got some for the boys at the dollar store a couple of months ago. Nasty stuff, but they have fun with it.

They loved cardboard boxes. When my youngest was about 2 or 3, he tore off the wrapping paper covering a push car. When he looked at it, he didn't even notice the car aspect. He just said "Wow! A Box!". Those were good days. We stopped by the box store and bought them boxes to play in, cut doors into, and paint all through elementary school. That, and making forts with blankets, chairs, and couches, were a common activity.

We didn't exactly buy them a wood burning kits. We got them soldering irons for electronics projects, but their favorite use of them was burning things into wooden planks. My youngest especially loves playing with fire, so we give him supervised opportunities to learn how to do it safely.

As for local kids games, they play them all the time here. Roughly every third house in the neighborhood has a basketball hoop on the driveway and ours gets used many, many times a week. My kids and neighbors kids are frequently out on their bikes, skateboards, and scooters. This Christmas, some type of stunt scooter became popular and lots of the elementary school kids have them. A couple of neighbors even built some small ramps for jumps.

Even games of tag, hide-and-go-seek, and such are common. I haven't heard them playing kick-the-can, but many of their games were common when I was a kid. They played zombie tag last night.

We haven't caught any bugs or reptiles in a while, but that was quite the thing a couple of years ago. We had a pet snake and a pet turtle that were both caught in the yard. They spent a few weeks as pets and were then set free again. Lizards were a popular catch for a while. My biggest animal rule has been that they must leave the lightening bugs alone. They are few and far between here, so I want them protected.

I do miss Jarts, but I understand why they are gone. We played a lot of croquet when I was little, but now it seems that everyone with a yard big enough has a pool inconveniently placed in the middle of it. We've done it at the park a few times, but it never really captured the kids imagination.

They have lots of cool things I would have loved as a kid. I'm not just talking about all the new technology stuff. We had little eggs of silly putty, but they have one pound bags of the stuff. And it isn't just pink. They have clear, glow-in-the-dark, and color changing "Thinking Putty". It's wicked cool stuff in big blogs. They also got to play with Bucky Balls. We stocked up on those before they were, understandably, taken off the market.

All-in-all, I don't see my kids lives as all that different than mine when I was their age.