Almost every evening just after it gets dark there are a
bunch of kids that play hide and seek on my street. They hide behind garbage
cans, trees, plants, cars, telephone poles, behind fences, on top of fences, or
cars. I hear scampering and scurrying
and loud whispering all evening. Sometimes when I am walking a kid will happen
to jump out of his hiding place and startle me. They just pop of nowhere
sometimes. You are not supposed to scream when this happens because it alerts
the person that is searching. If you see a kid hanging out behind a garbage can
you are not supposed to say "hola Ricado how are you?", you just smile and wink and walk by.
Sometimes they have a designated safe place that they try to run to without
getting tagged, this causes more running and even shrieking...mucho excitement.
I love all these sounds, the scurrying, running, shrieking, and loud
whispering, they are the sounds of a simple and fun life happening all around
me, they are sounds of my childhood. This is how I grew up, running around
outside until I was called in at night. At 8 pm almost on the dot all the kids
go home and you can hear the leaves rustle and the crickets, and of course the
surf.
A few days ago a
friend and I went to the far point (Los
Chivos) to swim and eat pizza, we were entertained by a group of about 6 kids
from the ages 3-8 (guessing) playing in the water all afternoon (it was a
Saturday). These kids played without an adult hanging over them all afternoon.
They had a boogie board and a paddle board and fell off them in every way
possible I think, head first, nose dive, butt first, they ran into each other,
knocked each other over (accidently). There was a boat docked so they climbed
into it and fell off of it every which way possible too. We saw a 3 year take a
very impressive nose dive off a boogie board in very shallow water, his nose
must have been packed with sand, he shook it off and didn't even squawk not
even a bit. Not one kid cried, no one ran to tell mom anything, no one was hungry
or had to pee, no one hurt themselves, they didn't fight over the boogie board,
not one mom had to yell at them once or remind them to be "good" or
to share or to take turns or to yell "stop that", or "do that
once more and we are going home". Nope. There were no hovering and yelling
moms.
At the same time we watch a father play in the water with
his 2 daughter, they had no toys, but they were just playing in the water,
chasing each other, racing, shrieking and laughing, making us laugh. Then they
discovered the paddle board and had fun falling off of it as well. You could
tell the father was really having a good time, he wasn't pretending, he wasn't
playing with his kids because his wife told him too or because they begged him
too, you could tell he was really into it, his laughter was genuine, he was
running and playing with heart and with pure joy, and you could tell they were
used to playing with him, this was not a special occasion. They weren't
clinging to him with fear that if they let him go he would go back to the table
and check his phone messages and the fun would be over.
Today I was at Los Chivos again ( I like it there) 3 little
kids entertained me on the trampoline, yes there is a big trampoline beside the
ocean. They jumped on that trampoline for 3 hours, non stop. They played all kinds
of silly games, I heard them make their rules up as they played, and change the
rules as they played as well. Again, they jumped into each other every way
possible and fell every way possible, and again not once did someone cry or
whine and not once did an adult intervene. I didn't even see their parents.
Last night as I came home from the beach my neighbors were
in the middle of a very exciting baseball game in their yard. The 6 year old
was batting and the mom was pitching and the dad was standing on the street in
case the kid hit it over the fence and onto the street, which he did many times
(their yard is small) in fact it is so small that any Canadian dad would have
never tried to play baseball in a space this small. They were so fun to watch, they
were laughing and their commentary to his batting was so fun, every time the
ball went over the fence they were cheering and clapping, the kid was jumping
up and down laughing at his parents being silly and chasing the ball. I laid in my hammock listening to them for an hour, almost made me tear up. (i know...I'm sappy sometimes)
Again,
they were not pausing and checking their cell phones, or their watches for the
time to see if they had spent enough "quality time" with their son,
nope, this was real, just parents playing with their son because they like to
play and have fun too.
Quite often I see North American families here on vacation,
most of the time you see the adults sitting in the restaurant under an umbrella
sipping beer and the kids sitting in the sand close to the table, sometimes
they play in the water on the edge but
it all seems very awkward and a bit stressed, no one really knows how to
behave, how to relax, how to have fun. Everything has to be just right, the
right clothes, swim suits, life jackets even, sunscreen, hats, umbrellas,
towels, bathrooms, and of course they will needs toys of some kind (what else
do you play with?). So they sit in the sand and dip their toes in the water not
really knowing what to do and usually end up just annoying their parents. The
parents just want to relax (they are on vacation after all) the loud Mexican music
annoys them, the kids are annoying them, the internet connection on their
Iphones is intermittent and that annoys them too, the bathrooms are dirty, the
table is wobbly and the bees keep trying to get into the coke bottles, the
waiter has limited English and the food doesn't come fast enough, the sun keeps
moving and the umbrella is never in the
right place and when it's time to leave the kids have gotten themselves dirty and
maybe even wet...now what!? When asked back home "how was your
holiday?" they say things like "nice, but it was tiring", or
I've also heard "I need time to recover from the stress of going on
vacation"...have you heard that? I
may even have said that years ago myself. I used to not know how to vacation either.
They should give classes, and have Mexicans teach it.
The other day there were a lot of Mexican tourist on the
beach that have come from inland Mexico, it must have been a Mexican holiday.
What a different scene that was. I saw kids, parents, grandparents in the
water, some with swim suits but the majority were in there with their clothes
on, I saw little kids digging holes in the sand
and filling them with water and making sand mud and lying in it, I saw
them covering mom or dad with sand mud, burying their parents in the sand,
whole families playing soccer, parents building sand castles with the kids, the
music was loud which resulting in some spontaneous dancing.
We have lost this in our country. We no longer like to play
and have fun, good clean, silly fun. Simple fun for no reason other than just
to have fun. Adults don't do it anymore and kids don't do it anymore. Kids need
to have trophies and prizes as motivation to get moving. There has to be adults
with clip boards and rules supervising and organizing. Plus we are too busy. Could
an adult even play with their kids for 3 hours without checking their cell
phone these days?
Oh...those parents with the boy playing baseball, they had a
set of 3 month old twins sleeping in the house, don't tell me they aren't busy
too.
This is a beautiful shot of Los Chivos that I scooped from the internet, no idea who to give credit, its clearly taken from the air. You can see how there is a perfect little shelter from the waves, perfect for a beginner swimmer and for kids to play in the water.
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| Yes, she runs, she is a beauty, pure genius. I happen to know this young man that built this, he is a mechanical genius, he built a working washing machine out of a plastic cup and the motor from a remote control car for his sister's barbie dolls when he was 8, and it worked. |
This is an amazing shot that a friend of mine snapped on a beach a little further south of here. I am always shy of snapping pictures of other people's kids but I think I would have caved and snapped this one too. A true picture of what happens on a real beach when it is full of nationals vacationing. I have seen parents clean and pack their kids up in so many interesting scenarios but this is priceless. There is so much happening in this one shot. You could write a whole story, maybe even a book on this one picture. One thing you know for sure, these kids had a great day at the beach, they played their heart out and will fall asleep on the way home and get carried into the house.
