Advise from Mr. Bradbury

The Neighborhood Gang

I am grateful for my childhood, to be surrounded by lots of kids of different ages to play with that were a mere walk down the street.

It seems like during present times, even before the pandemic, it is a heck of a lot harder to get the kids outside, playing with other kids. There aren't spontaneous play times any more, instead they have been replaced with "play dates".  Which makes getting two small children together more difficult than what I experienced dating someone when I was in my 20s. It's like matchmaking for children because not only do they have to get along but I have to be able to be on friendly terms with the mom. It's soo annoying!

My child cannot pick up a home phone (we don't have one hooked up at home anyways) and call his friends to talk about nothing with or to ask him/her if they want to play. Now, I have to be friends or acquaintances with the mother (because going through the father is weird and typically nothing planned ever happens, I have only tried this once. Little Dragon really wanted to set up a play date with a boy in his Kindergarten class. The child's mother has tragically past away in a vehicle accident a year before, where she somehow collided with a gas truck. I am not making this up. I thought Little Dragon was when he reported this to me, but it's all true. So freaking sad! Kids talk about these things at school, they basically run a soap opera in those classrooms, feeding off each other's drama. Poor little guy. Anyways- I attempted to set up a "play date" a couple of times through the dad unsuccessfully, but I am getting off topic). 

I literally have made up little business cards to give to kids that they are interested in spending some time out of school with, putting my name and phone number on a coloured recipe card with a happy face or sticker on it. Something along the line of: "Hi, So and So wants to play with your child. Please text me, so we can set something up." Maybe it looks like I am trying to hard; that I am coming off too strong? There may be a reason why I got the nickname, "Over-achiever Abby" in high school from some people. I swear, the things we do for our kids.

In the 1990s, I would literally walk down the street and knock on doors to ask if, "So and So, wanted to come out and play?" and 9 times out of 10, parents were more than HAPPY to send their child/children outside to play on the streets or to go to the green space/playground area behind our houses.

With 10-20 kids, there was no end to what games we could play together: soccer, street hockey, hide and go seek, kick the can, the "key game", grounders, and even to sit around and tell scary stories (we basically had our own "Midnight Society" totally copying the amazing show on YTV, Are You Afraid of the Dark?)

We would be out till 8-9pm sometimes in the summer evenings as the Canadian summers, the sun doesn't set until 10-1030pm at the height of the season. Parents would open the front or back doors, depending if we were in the street/sidewalks of the front yards or the green space/playgrounds of the backyards, and would literally just yell our names and we would eventually end up back at our respective houses with rosy cheeks and feeling like the world was alright and ours for the taking.

In the small, rural Alberta town that we presently live, we decided to live in a quiet corner where most of the residents are in their 60-70s. However, in the past couple of years a few more houses have been put up for sale with younger families moving in. Now they have two friends, each around their age, that they can walk down the street and ring the doorbell. Where I don't necessarily have to text their mom each time they want some company. I can't tell you how happy I am that they can have a taste of the childhood, that I once had.