O-mama - Opinionated Moms

• By Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler • 10 Comments
• Tagged in: For Kids

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I’m pretty sure this book was written to some degree in response to the coddled and sheltered atmosphere we’ve created for our children today.  Not only are they becoming screen zombies with zero social skills (like actually talking skills—not texting or insta-gramming or whatever) but they aren’t even being exposed to actual sports or recreational activities because they can do them virtually.

My kids were doing wii archery the other day.  They loved it.  And I do understand that it does take a modicum of skill to sort of aim the wii remote and then pull your nonexistent bow back and try to hit the target.  Whatever.  I actually have an archery trophy—junior girls champion (that’s 10 and under) from Summer camp.  I shot real arrows from my own little quiver at a real hay bale target.  I wore a little leather arm band in case the bow string snapped on my arm.  At the same camp, we shot rifles, rode horses, went on night hikes to stargaze. 

When we weren’t at camp, we played outside with the neighborhood kids on bikes and skateboards and roller skates.  We never even owned helmets or any kind of safety pads.  We climbed trees and fell out of trees.  We wiped out on our bikes constantly.  I think I actually sorta broke my hymen on this boys bike cause I fell forward right on to the bar and I bled a little.  I never even told my sisters let alone my mother.

None of us ever wore seat belts or rode in car seats.  Our school carpool had about 15 kids in it just piled on top of each other in the back of the station wagon.  My mother drove with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a coffee mug.  She usually was still wearing her bathrobe. She probably only had to rally to drive like once every 2 weeks because of the size of the group.  Conversely, I live about a minute and a half from my kids’ school and I drive them and pick them up every single friggin’ day.  And yes, said school is absolutely within walking/biking distance—but I’m nervous my kids will crash or some creep will nab them. 

My dad actually taught me to drive when I was about 10 on an old dirt runway.  I was going about 70 during the first and only lesson and I don’t even think either of us were wearing seat belts, and if we were they were just those cool old lap belts…how’s that going to help you in a head on?

Oh, there’s more…

My sisters and I used to play a game with some kids who lived on a ranch.  It started out as your basic cops/robbers type chase game or cowboys and Indians.  We played with real guns—BB guns but still.  So then we’d take a break from the running part and do a little target practice at trees and cans.  Then at one point we took one kid’s ballcap and propped it up ON HIS HEAD  and took turns shooting it off.  What the f---?  Can you imagine?

The other thing about all this chicanery is that not only did the adults not know what we were up to—THEY NEVER EVEN KNEW WHERE WE WERE.  We had to come home at dark for dinner.  That’s it.  No cell phones…no constant updates.  They were probably a lot more relaxed than we are as parents because they went on dates and trips and figured the sitter could call the police or paramedics—which is true! 

My sisters and I got in knock down, hair pulling, scratch fights.  We tied each other up and locked each other in toy trunks.  We threw my youngest sister down a laundry chute.  We made gross food/liquid concoctions both in the kitchen and outside in the yard…including mud tacos made in palm leaves which we then dared each other to eat—and then did eat and then barfed.

Scarily, my daring (stupid) antics only got worse as I got older.  I’ve fallen out of windows, crashed vespas, and really tested the boundaries of what one’s brain/body can handle as far as various ingestables.  And let’s just leave it at that.  I should be dead—but that is true for so many of us 40 somethings. 

And don’t even get me started on the drunk driving!  (Earmuffs kids!) We are uber-diligent now about getting cabs etc. but back in college, I don’t remember it ever occurring to us to appoint a designated driver.  I don’t think legally back then it was such a nightmare—but you can still die!  Or kill someone for that matter.  It just seems nuts to me now.  I had one smart friend who always ran home from wherever we were and then ran back to get his car in the morning.  It could be 2 miles or 6 or 10, he almost always did it.  He was likely driven more by vanity than anything, he was the only one of us who wasn’t constantly battling the “beer puff.”

Quite honestly, my whole family is pretty wild.  My parents are wild.  They have wild friends.  We grew up with that sort-of daring/craziness.  My dad has one friend who used to eat glass in bars, stop ceiling fans with his face, even lit himself on fire once if the stories are true.  This was long before Jackass was even a glint in Johnny Knoxville’s eye.

So in the spirit of this book and the spirit of childhood and joy and not being a worry wart, I tried to give my kids a little more freedom over the Christmas break.  (Granted I did my little experiment in Palm Desert, California where the average age is about 80 and no one drives faster than about 22 mph.)  So I let the kids bike and skate on their own.  I let them hike and roller blade and swim without my constant diligence.  I let them stay up late and not shower every night and eat a lot of sugar.

This is all sounding a bit lame especially because I specifically remember playing two games in Palm Desert when I was their age: 1. The golf cart centrifugal force game: 1 guy hangs off the side and the other guy drives in circles till first guy flies off.  My kids will never play that game because technically you aren’t supposed to drive the carts until you are 16 and because I’m pretty sure I had 2-3 concussions as a child that were totally unknown and unmonitored.  Game 2 was called Stranger Pool Dive.  Again we were driving the carts underage and we would stop at the back hedges of people’s homes and then run into their yards—dive into their pools, swim across, jump out, run back to the cart and then speed away---on to the next pool, laughing our asses off.  We could faintly hear the sounds of vacationers and retirees : “hey, who was that?” “Did you see those damned kids?”  “What the hell?”

Good times.  Good times.  I guess if my kids have the ingenuity and the chutzpah to come up with that game and then execute it without getting thrown in country club jail, then go for it, I say.  In the meantime, try some of the fun experiments in Tulley’s book!