A while ago, Ted Koppel did a show somewhere in a very depressed area. I don't remember whether it was South America, Africa, middle east, but it was a hot dry area. I don't remember the color of the people's skin. There were no jobs, and families were struggling to stay together and stay fed. And then Mr. Koppel said something that has bothered me ever since.
He was standing in the courtyard of a group of shared homes, with a cluster of small children around him. One of the little girls was holding a dismembered doll. The doll was missing all its limbs, or its head, or something major, I forget, and Mr. Koppel said, in a very sad tone, "This is the only toy for all these children."
Now, it wasn't "this is the only toy" that bothered me. What bothered me was that he seemed to think that was awful.
There were all kinds of sticks and boards and dirt and rocks and pebbles and piles of rags around. There was a well, with water. For kids, those are the best toys! With some sticks and a piece of board, and a wad of dried mud wrapped in rags, you've got a cricket game. With some holes scrapped in the dirt and a handful of pebbles, you've got Mancala. With a pile of rocks, you've got king of the mountain. With sticks and the ground to draw on, you can play school. Or play house. With rags, you can make temporary "paintings", or rag dolls. You've got the whole world for hide and seek. With only two or three other kids you've got Tag, and Mother May I, and other games. Games that require and teach cooperation and trust and fair play. With a couple of Grandparents around, you've got stories. These are the best toys! They're almost lucky they don't have anything from a toy store. (Note that they weren't starving. Struggling yes, starving no. They were well enough to play.)
Handing a kid a truckload of toys kills imagination and creativity. When I was young, nobody had much, and some of my favorite memories are of the "playhouses" we scraped into a floor of pine needles, "this is the living room, and this is the kitchen, and...", and we pantomimed cooking and cleaning, and visiting each other, just like our mommies. You need a truck? There's a pine cone over there. I played Hide and Seek with the little kids in the neighborhood right up until I went to college. Our favorite time was just before dusk, when it was hard to see, and if you were very still, you could hide almost in plain sight.
So, "this is the only toy" isn't all that bad, and Mr. Koppel was wrong to imply that it was.
***************************************
One of those silly personality tests that go around asked if you had ever laughed at a funeral. They seemed to think that was a bad thing. I laughed at my mother's funeral, and smiled and giggled at Jay's memorial service. Some people did look askance at me, but I wasn't ashamed either time.
My brother Duke has a son, Randy, from a short-lived hurry-up marriage at 18. At the time of my mother's death, Randy was about 22. He arrived at the funeral with a drop-dead gorgeous blond woman on his arm. It was obvious they were very intimate, the way they looked at each other, the way he was so solicitous of her, the way they passed messages with a glance, the little touches on the hand or arm. However, she was obviously at least 35 years old. I was very curious.
After the service, out in the foyer, I asked my sister, "Who's the woman with Randy? Isn't she a bit old for him? What's going on there?" She gave me a strange look and said, "That's JoAnn, his mother."
I cracked up.
Well, come on. I hadn't seen her in more than 20 years!
So I walked over to JoAnn and Randy, and introduced myself to her, told her I'd have acknowledged her sooner except that I hadn't recognized her, and then I said, "You know, when you two came in together, I thought 'Hmmm. Randy likes older women. Well, at least he has good taste!' "
They cracked up.
~~Silk
No comments:
Post a Comment