kids

23 posts

They Used to Let Kids Play in Caves

Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.

“Oh, don’t do it again, Tom, it is too horrid,” said Becky.

“It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know,” and he shouted again.

The “might” was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened; but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a certain indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to Becky— he could not find his way back!

– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A comment by SusanBAwesome on an open thread, about visiting Carlsbad Caverns, reminded me of one of my best memories of childhood. See, as a kid my local Boy Scout troop would make an annual “caving” trip. I always looked forward to this trip. It was the highlight of the year.

We didn’t go to a place like Luray Caverns. Where we went, there were no handrails, or electric lights and there sure as shit was no gift shop. There was a hole….  in the side of a hill…. somewhere in central Pennsylvania. It was far from anything else. I remember we camped the night before in a field next to a cow pasture.

To access the cave, we parked our cars on the side of the road and climbed up the side of the hill. My high-tech spelunking equipment consisted of:

  • 1 Philadelphia Phillies souvenir plastic batting helmet
  • 1 K-Mart brand flashlight that my dad wired to a 6-volt lantern battery. (Do they even make those any more? Probably not.)
  • Duct tape. For attaching the flashlight to the helmet, natch.
  • Extra candles. Just in case.
  • Matches. Just in case.
  • 1 waterproof match case
  • 1 souvenir Philly Phanatic fanny pack, to carry my battery, candles and matches

When I think back, this sounds ridiculously crazy but at the time it made total sense. The souvenir helmet would protect my head, the big battery would last longer than D-cells. I was set!

So we got to the cave, and we went in. Now, when people think of caves, they think of giant caverns and passageways you can easily walk through. That is horseshit! Most real caves are nothing like that. These caves were tighter than a nun’s birth canal. Even us 12-year-old boys had to suck in our stomachs to fit through some of the spaces. Oh, and there was standing water everywhere. I’ll never forget the time we were crawling through a section on all fours and I looked up and there was a baby bat just hangin’ out six inches from my head. He was surprisingly cool with having a bunch of hellions tearing up his cave.

And tear it up we did. I don’t think you can really cause that much ecological damage to a cave just by crawling through it, but we were allowed to run wild. I still remember walking into a room and seeing one of the kids squatting in the corner. Apparently last night’s dinner wouldn’t wait. (When word got back to the dads about the cave-pooping…. there was hell to pay.)

But for the most part, the dads let us just wander off to explore the passageways. At least it seemed like it at the time. Maybe they were keeping an eye on us… but I doubt it.

Now that I think back to those cave trips, I wonder if they’d still let kids do that today. Would parents let their children wander through caves without adults holding their hands? And this was the early 90s. That’s not even a long time ago! Are we really changing that fast?

As an adult I think back to how my great-grandfather had worked around the mines all his life. He was an Italian immigrant who became a blacksmith for a mining company in West Virginia. His trade spared him from a life spent underground, but the world of mining was all around him (actually, he apparently was an organizer for the UMW). Kids not much older than us little Boy Scouts were actually working the mines back in the bad old days.

And now that I’m older, I think I am at least a slightly better person for having gotten a little taste of what it’s like to spend time under the Earth. I’m glad I never had to work in a mine, but I’m also glad that my parents and the other adults around us as kids didn’t take away our ability to explore the world in the name of keeping us always safe.

Crazy Parents

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Our son, who is 3, is playing soccer. He’s in a 2.5 to 4 year old league. You can just imagine the skill level. My purpose in enrolling him was two-fold. First of all, he looks adorable in the uniform. That might have been my primary reason. Secondly, I need to find activities to wear him out. He’s got a lot of energy and if I don’t do something to wear him out, he’s up half the night. Since I am somewhat handicapped, it can be hard for me to do that on my own.

He’s played two games, and when I say “Played”, I mean he’s sat on my or my husband’s lap during two games. He doesn’t seem to be too interested in playing, which is a little annoying, but isn’t that big of a deal. He’s 3. Even if he does better than anyone else in the league, he is only likely to hit the ball in one out of 50 kicks. Clearly, skill isn’t the focus. I actually think, as far as the kids are concerned, that juice boxes are the focus. The parents are mainly there for their own amusement.

At least most of the parents. Tonight I had my first glimpse of the insane sports parents in the earliest available incarnation. They spent most of the game screaming at their daughter, Lucy, who is not even on our team, but showed up to substitute. Poor Lucy (who is THREE) didn’t even know the coach or the other players since it wasn’t her regular team. Her father led much of the shouting. He sounded exactly like Ray Barone if Ray Barone was about to have a stroke from tension.
Here are a few samples:
• “Dammit Lucy, I showed up to see you PLAY!!”
• “Lucy, you’re not focused!”
• “Lucy, you are running around aimlessly!”
• “Dammit Sheila (or whatever his wife’s name is), she’s not even trying!”

I wanted to ask “Trying to what, exactly?” Steal the ball from the kid who is picking his nose? Score a goal, since the net is wide open because the other team’s defense is picking flowers? Wind sprint across the field and slide tackle the kid who has taken his shoes off? What the heck was Lucy’s objective?

I found out a little later that this is Lucy’s second (SECOND!) season of soccer. That explains why Lucy was so far ahead of her teammates. She knew where the field was and seemed to understand that the game began in the center of the field. This gave her a huge advantage over the kids who ran over to their mommies every time the whistle sounded. (My son never got off my lap in the first place and thus was never startled by the whistle).

I don’t know Lucy’s parents at all, but I’m sure they will be easy to track down over the years. They’ll be screaming at the coach at her first grade tee ball games and her father will publicly threaten to disown her when she doesn’t catch a fly ball at her seventh grade softball game. Lucy (she’s 3) is in for a loooong 15 years of parental encouragement. I just hope she doesn’t end up graduating first in her rehab class.
Godspeed, Lucy.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/archer10/3728919227/

Japanese Robot Babies: because not enough people think robots are going to take over the world

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Check this little guy out! A group of scientists at Osaka University designed him to make realilistic human expressions in an attempt to study human social development between parents and children. There’s some scientist who is totally marking off a graph being really pissed off that he can’t find a suitable control model for his experiments because some babies are happier than others, and dreaming up this little abomination. They tried using robots in the past, but the robots didn’t work “in a natural way” and therefore the parents didn’t interact properly with them.  Video of them in action:

I don’t know about you, but look at those eyes. I’d totally name him “Shifty.” He needs some servos adjusted, stat!

Here he is, without the “realilistic” skin! :

Look! The full range of emotions!:

I hope they never show this infographic to “parents” in the study:

Totally creepy, but I think it could be viable. For all of those people out there who are stuck in their phones updating facebook and think that social interaction in over 140 characters is taxing- there’s a companion for you! The maternal/paternal instinct in humans is huge! Make this thing Wi-fi, be able to download a playlist from iTunes and have a wireless charging platform (it already looks like it’s an Apple product) and make a billion dollars! Isn’t a new “Chucky” movie in production?