“The other day.” I love that expression. The other day could be a month ago or two days ago; there are no rules. The only thing “the other day” is limited to is not being today. Anyway, as I cross the line on rambling, the other day I was thinking about the games we used to play at school as children, the fun that held us together in those moments, the common connection that took all the pieces that we were individually and made us a single whole. We were the “students of Alberton Central School.” We played marbles, red rover, dodge ball. Everyone played. We put the smallest kid on the end of the chain for “crack the whip” and that small child, often me, would be airborne before landing in a heap. We played scrub baseball where no one bothered to keep score. We played hopscotch and turned our skipping ropes while singing songs that were more familiar to us than the national anthem, the words flowing from our mouths more in reflex than conscious thought. “On a mountain, stands a lady, who she is, I do not know….” What games do children play today, I wonder, what activities unite them at recess in an arena of equality?
We know we now live in the age of technology; there is no debating that. Children embrace technology as easily as they learned to walk, as a need not a luxury, and many parents have complied to the wants of their children, arming them with cell phones and tablets and any manner of devices. We innocently watched as technology slowly or maybe quickly infiltrated our lives. I knew of some back in the 1990s who resisted with their whole being, did not have a cell phone, did not engage in any social media, did not communicate by email. I can’t help wondering if they have been successful in their resistance, holding up their hand with a firm “no,” or if they too finally had to accept that much of the business of being alive requires access to the internet.
On that same “the other day,” a bunch of my neighbours gathered for an evening of pizza to toast the fading light of summer. We winced about the continued lack of rain and the increasing risk of fire, all of us on alert whose homes were built inside a forest. The conversation wound its way into the increasing requirements to rely on technology for our communication. Many have aging parents whose need for computers and the like was not essential when they were younger yet now are facing the obligation of compliance. Every single one of us is aging and will one day, if we continue to breathe, will find ourselves in the demographic of the forgotten and overlooked. Agism is hurled at me despite my thinking I am still a contributing member of society.
In the spring of this year, Revenue Canada began the process of converting all communication with businesses to the online system. In 2024, 93% of all tax returns were filed online and this will eventually become mandatory for all. This isn’t an issue for most of us, but there are those who live in areas where there is no cell service and where there is no access to internet; the infrastructure just isn’t there. For almost a decade now, the various internet provider platforms have made promises to government of expanding that infrastructure, but so far it has just been talk without action. Setting that aside, I repeat the question… what games are our children playing while at school that doesn’t involve an electronic device?
My daughter is an elementary school principal in Surrey, B.C. What she is seeing is a generation who don’t know how to “play.” Children’s lives seem scheduled down to the last second with organized sport, various clubs, etc. Children don’t have a chance to develop an inventory of self-starting games from which to draw. I had the great fortune of growing up feral, my parents barely noticing if I was missing. I exaggerate, but we had the freedom to scuff our knees and break the odd bone. We knew how to solve our problems, even if it meant taking our toys and going home. Oh, what I’d give for a game of marbles or to skip double-dutch again. Who’s up for a game of tag?
wendistewart@live.ca
