The Sad Slow Death of Childhood.

I was approaching eleven years old when I had gotten my first taste of technology. It was in the fall of 1969, at the very beginning of the rainy season in central California, when I had bought my very first transistor radio. I don’t recall much about it except that I bought it at a store called Western Auto, and it was red. And out in the country where we lived, it picked up about three or maybe four tops different am radio stations. Remember am radio? My step-brother (Who was 1 year older than me) and I had been planning our big weekend out in back of the farm.

We had gotten some old bedsheets from my closet and were in the process of constructing the biggest, bad ass tent in our backyard that either of us had ever seen. We were just two kids with a plan, and a whole weekend to execute it. We slept out under that raggedy old tent most of the night listening to the radio, and outlining “the plan.” There was a wide ditch full of water that ran between our side of the property line and the tomato field that was next to us. The plan was simple, we were going to “Borrow” a couple- (Or five or six ) double-sided pallets that were laying out in the barn we would then drag them into one of the many wood sheds out back. We were going to construct a couple of Rafts that we would sail down the ditch with, stopping at various points to catch us a few Crawdads. (crawfish)

The next morning on a Saturday as I recall, we took the Radio out in the shed with us, we copped a few of the old man's tools and drug the pallets from out of the barn and took them to the shed and began to plug all of the holes that were in them, with boards and nails. See, what we figured was, “Hey… It's wood, and wood floats, Right?” uhh, yeah sure. We cleverly concealed the entire operation from my mother and stepfather and upon completion of both Rafts drug them to the ditch full of water one at a time and prepared our selves for “The Launch.” we managed to drag both rafts to the edge of the water line just in time for it to start raining.

Our young minds were filled with excitement and joy as we each took turns pushing our creations into the water filled ditch, My step-brother pushed his in first, as I prepared my own pirate raft for its maiden voyage, and when the moment of truth came, with transistor radio in my coat pocket, I launched. Well they did actually float as I recall, Long enough to get us both out into the middle of the ditch, to where both rafts promptly sank like a couple of rocks. Mine, of course, managing to somehow take my new transistor radio with it. Well we both made it through the ordeal and safely back to shore alive, soaking wet but alive. And there was Mom, standing on the back porch watching us drag our eleven-year-old know it all asses out of the water , shaking her head to and fro with complete disgust for what she was witnessing.

We were kids, because we were allowed to be kids. We didn’t have middle schools, our mothers didn’t have to schedule play dates, nobody ever got shot at in school, in fact nobody ever even thought to bring any guns to school. Childhood lasted until you hit thirteen or so as I recall, and then you became a teenager, and slowly began to develop more adult oriented habits, like becoming interested in the opposite sex, thinking about your first set of wheels and such things as that. As an adult, I think back to when I was a child, and then I bring myself back to the here and now. I think that what disturbs me most is how little is left to a child’s imagination, If you can think about something, you can either go online to find it, or just buy the video game. I don't know if it's some twisted side effect of evolution or if some people are trying to kill it intentionally, they over sexualize children, they teach them things that a kid shouldn't have to even think about, How sad it is for me personally, to witness what seems to be the slow death of childhood, how sad indeed.