Musings & Ramblings

Saw this via my dog's twitter. Pretty cool. I'd watch more Disney stuff if they had characters like that. Then again, I've always liked twisted, strange and disturbing things.

Even as a kid, I loved scarey stuff. My mother told me ghost stories as bedtime stories. I particularly remember the story of The Screaming Skull. Now some would say she warped me, scarred me for life. I say, she challenged my imagination.

She also used to tell us if we didn't keep our feet under the cover during the winter, the Foot Snatcher would steal our feet. My cousins told me they still can't sleep without something over their toes at the very least, 'cause of Mama's stories of the Foot Snatcher. Neither can I.

I think kids nowadays aren't being challenged to use their imaginations. We all made up stories and acted them out in play. We had elaborate scenarios, dressed up in old clothes we found in our grandmother's trunks, imagined vast rooms in castles delineated by the roots of the huge, old oak trees, azalea bushes, and mimosa trees. The lane leading to Grandma's house was a long corridor with rooms leading off into the bushes on either side. Swords, spears, bouquets and even pompoms all came from the Chinaberry trees which grew all around the property.

We would go out and play from morning 'til bedtime and just come in to use the bathroom or get something to drink or eat.

We didn't wait to be entertained. We entertained ourselves. We didn't know what was on TV at the time and didn't care. We didn't wait for a game to tell us what to do; we made our own rules and our own games and they involved movement. If we wanted to explore a different planet, we decided what part of the yard was the new landscape and set about exploring it, making up features as we went along.

I don't want to sound like an old fogey, whining about how 'these kids nowadays have no idea how to play'. But it does make me smile when I see kids actually playing, making things up, using their imaginations. Not everything has to be planned out and spoon fed.