Take the most fun thing we did as kids. Whatever it was. For me at age 10, it was playing baseball with my friends until dark with a tennis ball that you never play tennis with, or some raggedy foul ball you were lucky enough to chase down at a minor league game. And you play for 4 hours, from after school until it’s suddenly dark and you’re starving and sprinting home with your glove and the now dirt brown tennis ball tucked in it. You’re in the shit now, dinner’s probably ready, but it was worth it. Totally fun and totally worth it.
Now baseball’s 4 or 5 days a week for the elementary kids I know. 2 hour practice, 3 days a week. 3 hours of games twice a week. Beating the fun out of our national pastime. But you wanna play in high school, at the minimum? Better have played rec, league, take clinics, hire a freakin sports psychologist if you really want to do well and keep playing. There’s no ‘ just for the fun of it’ here. But by the time kids have free time, about the last thing they want to do is play more baseball. Baseball is work, even by the time they’re in 4th grade. I’m gonna play on my Ipad and veg out, thank you very much.
Same thing with so much. Like playing volleyball? Me too! Better hope you get in the best league in the area if you ever want to play later. Like doing cartwheels? Gymnastics is 4 days a week, 3 hours a day. You eat dinner during your 10 minute break. Ain’t life grand. Aren’t you having fun. I’ll make sure not to ask.
We are seriously sucking the fun out of everything. Our kids like to do something, so we go crazy on it. Let’s make sure it starts at 7 in the morning and do it 4 days a week. The coaches are gonna need to be certified in a whole bunch of crap because this is for real. I don’t care if she just wants to play a little softball a couple days a week. There’s a schematic for all this, a trajectory for her development and career in…well I don’t know, there should be professional softball if there’s not. Maybe by the time she’s old enough there will be.
Is it our generation’s compulsion or just human compulsion in general? I don’t know. The compulsion to be the best obviously runs deep and long in our genetic strivings, and I respect that. I have told both girls often that they should choose to be great in something. Work at it, perfect a craft, that sort of crap. But does that paradigm need to pervade every freaking inch of our lives? Their lives? Do they have to purse a track for everything if they are unlucky enough to have an interest and an aptitude for it?
Talk about the ultimate manifestation of ‘be careful what you’re good at’. They’re gonna make you keep doing it, whether it’s at work or your childhood. Kept me from practicing a few of the more mundane and gross things as a young adult, after I figured out that the boss would have me keep folding all the napkins in the restaurant because I did it so well that other time. Wow, are you good at cleaning toilets, Matt! Congratulations. Here’s a golden brush.
And modern childhood is, come to think about it, a lot of work. It looks like our kids have it made, until you sit down and watch for awhile. Goal oriented activities to improve base skills and core competencies. Even the games they play all have purpose, with a quickness. Fun has turned into work. No time for you and your friends to dilly dally in that empty lot with jackets and backpacks for bases. C’mon and get your uniform and cleats on. There are drills and conditioning and assessments to be done. Multi-day assessments, sometimes, like for this year’s middle school basketball team. AAHHHH! Multi-day assessments for middle school basketball, are you fucking kidding me!? They’re not supposed to have to eat shit sandwiches this early. I would have never played basketball if I had to do that.
Sign me up for a childhood hidden in the basement playing video games and eating double stuffed Oreos, please. School today was more than enough. My other flunkie friends can hang with me. I have to do something, you say? OK, I… like swimming. Swim team? That sounds pretty official and full of practice. I like playing soccer, maybe….soccer league is 10 months of the year!? Um, no. What about archery? No I don’t want lessons 3 times a week. Never mind. ‘Video Game Creation’ at college for kids? That sounds pretty cool, I guess. Wait, in the summer, every day for a month? I was hoping to just goof around, languish in mediocrity for another year or two. You’re killing me, imaginary Mom.
The compulsion to be the first in line, hours or days before everyone else, fuels the race to the “top.” The first to get the good stuff, because there’s not enough to go around, of whatever it is. The first to achieve, accomplish, possess. Now that everyone’s standing in line, there won’t be enough for sure, and the world gets up real early. Price is Right tickets, estate sale bargains, Spanish immersion school lotteries, camping spots reserved instantly 6 months out, coveted spots on the high school ukulele team. You name it, there’s a parent and often their kid standing in a line for it. Sucking all the fun out of what used to be casual pleasures.
By the time a line like that comes to an end, I often realize I didn’t really want it that bad in the first place. And then I hate myself for putting so much value on the ukulele team, and wasting an entire day on it. I really just wanted to learn how to play one stupid long song by the fire, not attend a seminar filled with other passionate ukulele enthusiasts. Not travel to compete with other ukulele teams on the national circuit. I never even made ‘Uke League,’ obviously, as I look around and see everyone with their Dri-fit colored league team uniforms and fancy ukulele cases their parents mortgaged the house for. Crap, the kids from San Diego are incredible, casually spitting out flamenco style ukulele stylings on their steel strings. Didn’t even know they came in steel string. Too late to back out, Mom already paid 800 dollars for this camp. Said I had to pick something, and she meant it. I shoulda played that Kermit the Frog song a lot worse.
The thriving economy of childhood strivings. Interest and aptitude is shown, and instantly a line is formed. You could be really good at this. You’ve got some promise, some skills, you just need to apply yourself and one day you could tour the Hawaiian circuit. You never know. You could be bigger than Jake Shumabukuro, Brother Iz, maybe even Tiny Tim! Although he was supposedly a comedian, and you’d have to go to supposed comedian school. That’s affordable, but the semesters are long.
Oh well, it beats baseball practice. Ukulele school with a supposed comedian minor, here I come! Hopefully I can make the team.