Video Games, Cell Phone, i-Pad…Butch Didn’t Need Those!

Let me ask you this…How do kids today entertain themselves in their spare time? The answer is obvious. They are either fixated on their cell phone or i-Pad…or playing video games. Of course, many children play organized sports in school, which is great, but it seems that when school is over, the technological devices take over. My generation had no cell phones. In fact, my family didn’t even have a landline dial phone until 1958 when I was in the 4th grade. And video games, tablets, i-Pads, computers, etc. would have sounded like science fiction back then. So what did we baby-boomers do for fun? Here is what I did….

If the weather was nice (and many times when it wasn’t too great), I was outside. My mother insisted that I “get some fresh air…go do something!” Of course work came first, but if I had the chores done, I could always think of fun activities…like playing cowboys and Indians, playing army, and shooting my BB-gun. I played basketball down at the barn, and baseball and golf in our front pasture. I built a pole vault stand and practiced with an 8-foot steel section of a TV antenna. I rode my bike all around the countryside and fished at three nearby gravel pits. I built straw tunnels and hideouts in the barn, made things from scrap wood in Dad’s toolshed, and went exploring in the woods behind our house. If friends came over, we often played hide and seek or competed against each other in rope skipping, hula hoops, horseshoes, dodgeball, in addition to sports. In the winter, we built snowmen and forts and had snowball fights.

But we also played lots of games inside, such as Scrabble, Monopoly, Yahtzee, Candy Land, Sorry, checkers, pick-up-sticks, Old Maid, and my favorite game…Uncle Wiggily. One of the best games my brother and I played was Bas-Ket, in which we tried to flip a ping pong ball into the tiny basketball goals. My cousin gave us an electronic football game once, but when the switch was turned on, the tiny men buzzed all over the place. I received an electric golf putting game one Christmas, and it was fun. Of course, we also played hide and seek in the house…until the time my brother hid right behind me, while my eyes were closed…and urinated on top of my head before I had reached counting to

100…Thanks, Gary! I also remember playing marbles, jacks, slinky, and trying my best to do yo-yo tricks. We asked the “Magic 8-ball” hundreds of crazy questions. We also played birthday party type games such as pin-the-tail on the donkey and clothespin in a bottle. My sisters played lots of games, too, but also played house and with their dolls, and practiced their cheerleading skills.

No matter what….we could ALWAYS think of something. Yes, sometimes we had a little too much fun…got in trouble…and paid the consequences. Rock fights and BB-gun wars are good examples. Ooops! But we learned our lesson and survived. When Dad took away my BB-gun for a month (for accidentally shooting out the kitchen window), I had hundreds of other things to occupy my time. I have witnessed parents today threatening to take away their child’s phone, i-Pad, or video games for bad behavior, and the child acts as if the world was coming to an end. The child is literally devastated.

Uncle Wiggily, Bas-Ket, and the other old games…where are you? We need you. We need you now. And if you refuse to play and stay in your room and pout…then…like we used to say….”you lose…SORRY!”

John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 32 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.