http://nola.live.advance.net/news/t-p/sttammany/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1217482383154890.xml&coll=1

That’s a natural question for kids in 2008, but everyone my age at work who heard this quote, from people in their thirties to those in their sixties, seemed a bit surprised that a kid would pose this particular question when his arm was spouting blood a la Monty Python. Now that he’s okay and it’s become apparent that he’ll get a prosthetic arm (because they weren’t able to reattach the original one, retrieved from the alligator’s belly) I picture him figuring out how to master his videogames with a machine arm, and becoming a kind of modern-day Southern “Tommy”.  I don’t begrudge him his technology, and I completely understand why he might shelve swimming for awhile and feel more comfy with a game screen.

That same week I read an article with this oddly specific and startling headline:

CONSERVATIONISTS CONCERNED AS NATURE SURVEY REVEALS ONE IN THREE CHILDREN CAN'T IDENTIFY A FROG.

The poll of nine to 11-year-olds by BBC Wildlife magazine also found playing in the countryside was the least popular way of spending their spare time, below seeing friends, playing on the computer or going shopping.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1040536/Conservationalists-concern-nature-survey-reveals-children-identify-frog.html

I thought to myself, well, this kid who lost an arm at least has something over 1/3 of his British peers. He knows what a gator is, and I’m certain he knows what a frog is. And given the time he seems to have spent at this pond where the gator lived, I bet he wouldn’t put playing “in the countryside” below shopping. So let him have his PlayStation 3. He deserves it. Any kid who can fend off a dinosaur-like creature ten times his weight, pull himself up out of the water and crawl up a hill with his arm severed…he’s okay in my book. Let’s just say, if I were Donald Trump, after I paid off Ed McMahon’s house, I’d buy the kid an arcade of his own.

But here’s the thing. My husband and I were talking about the days of Atari, which means those days of roaming around our yard and neighborhood and parks and fields in the seventies when there was actually a bit more green space  or at least, there was less to do inside, in those pre-cable, pinball wizard days. And we concluded that because we came of age then, although we embrace computers now and love them and could not live without them, we had the base knowledge of nature first (and don’t say it’s because Atari sucked compared to PlayStation 3. Doesn’t matter. We had nothing to compare it to!). We built our brains and bodies by running around and using our imaginations and killing time outside, where the variables are innumerable and the boredom is quelled only by creating more variables.

I am no scientist and I can’t say for certain that I’m a better learner or thinker or doer just because I spent a lot of time climbing trees and gathering snails in the creek, but I do think it must have created some grooves in my brain that are not part of the typical kid’s brain these days, and I do think it’s better to have that as your baseline that can be applied to, say, other types of learning (like computer stuff) than, say, learning computers first and having them as your primary companion, then being thrown outside to fend for yourself—or just play for a few hours.  Having to invent scenarios and role-play and dig up stuff and get muddy and spend all day without a plan but making it up as we went along, reacting to weather and animals and spending hours alone and getting lost and finding my way and coming home with all manner of scrapes and bruises and sweat and dirt—I’d assume this is superior in the longterm to sitting in air conditioning playing video games for four hours in more or less one fixed, seated position.

I of course do have some primary research to base this on. I have two stepsons, nine and eleven years old, and the first year I met them, they were really into board games and hiking and reading and coloring. They were six and eight then. Now they’re really into PlayStation 3 and unless we take them to play tennis or I tell them to put on the Superman boxing gloves I bought them and go outside (really) or we suggest a board game, then they sit in front of the t.v. playing away in a kind of trance (I even suggested to my husband that it was a form of pre-pubescent porn…escapism, adrenaline, addiction, mindless and mechanistic, it’s all there). Granted, it is 109 degrees outside and the visuals in the games are far more intriguing probably than the rather mediocre field behind our house that was recently partially converted into a parking lot. Why go out there and turn into liquid when you can stay inside, drink Kool-Aid, eat microwave popcorn, visit the Holy Lands and kill strangers without breaking a sweat?

It first occurred to me that they were lacking in that nineteen seventies “I’m going out outside Ma, see you when the streetlight comes on” kinda way on a day that I came home and the nine year old was sitting on the porch with a friend. They were staring straight ahead, not talking, just fidgeting in their chairs, wagging their legs and mindlessly tearing up the porch plants next to them. “What are you doing?” I asked, worried something bad had happened, that someone had gotten into a fight, temporarily canceling a game of tag or hide and seek.  “Nothing. We went out to the field but nothing was going on,” said my stepson, who by the way can name all manner of frogs—and fishes and dogs and spiders and wild cats because he is obsessed with animals and reads Zoobooks magazine from cover to cover and when he was eight calmly pointed out the precise name of a rare fox on a Discovery Channel show. Every time we go to the zoo we remind him that there are plenty of careers for someone like him. He just shrugs because it’s so absolutely natural to him to know and name every animal he sees that he can’t comprehend how impressed we are with his abilities.

“Nothing going on?” I smiled. “Well, that's a field for you,” I said and then suggested he take some of their toys, like their moon shoes or something out there, maybe their boxing gloves, or, hey, how about a frisbee or football?!

You would have thought I’d given them a map to the Holy Grail. They lit up like Indiana Jones finding a crate in a cave and ran inside to gather some unnatural objects to take into the natural world so something would be “going on”. Well, whatever.  At least they were outside.

I was shocked and excited when two weeks ago the eleven-year old told me he was going outside to catch lizards and dragonflies to feed to the neighbor’s pet snake. Normally the killing of innocent creatures does not make me so gleeful, but I was so glad that he wasn’t marching straight to his room to the game module that I suddenly felt guilty because I realized that part of my problem with their love of videogames was that I was jealous of the PlayStation. My husband at least spent quality time playing it with them. I had no interest and secretly hoped for blackouts. Now that he was talking about going outside to do things I think a boy should be doing, and doing the kind of stuff I liked to do at his age, I was a much friendlier grown-up. I felt connected. The generation gap shrunk between us and I skipped over the small space like a schoolgirl, telling him that I had an old butterfly net he could use. I then spent 30 minutes digging in the attic and all the closets until I found it. When I presented it to him, he was happy, I was happy, everything was lit up by a soft 1970s glow, all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.  It made me want to bake cookies and go all Super Stepmom.  Why couldn’t he come home from school every day and grab his butterfly net?, I wondered, whistful for the summer to begin again. Sort of. And then I went to check my email while he went outside to sweat, capture, and kill.

But maybe I’m wrong thinking that playing outdoors is superior to all other kids’ activities. A study that came out this week at the American Psychological Association said that video games can actually “increase younger students’ problem-solving potential” and that they even appear to sharpen “scientific thinking skills”. 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080818/ap_on_re_us/video_games_learning

Do I stand corrected? Not quite. The same day that study came out I read about a boy in India who pushed a ten-year old girl from a 30-foot bridge, killing her for her iPod. While these two stories have absolutely nothing to do with one another and probably ought not be compared, I’m doing it anyway, mainly because I’ve seen how angry and possessive my stepsons can get fighting over the PlayStation (and really, could you see anyone getting killed over Atari?). Would they throw one another off a bridge for it? Probably not. But it’s the only time I see them really get ugly with each other. So besides despising the PlayStation because they prefer it to tree climbing and lizard catching and reading and drawing, besides resenting it for being something I can’t share with them, I hate it because it sometimes makes them hate each other.

If they’re going to get angry with one another, I’d rather they put on the Superman boxing gloves and fight it out. Or catch dragonflies and feed them to snakes.  Maybe even swim with alligators. Okay, maybe not that.

More than anything I want them to wander into the field where nothing is going on and stay there, bored, curious, and waiting, armed with nothing but their imaginations, until something is. I want them to put to use all those problem-solving and scientific thinking skills supposedly honed during the hundreds of hours playing video games and transform that mediocre half-paved field into something magical. If we could do it in the Seventies after only playing Atari a few hours a week, think what they might be capable of.

We’ve all done it. Said “maybe” instead of “no, I’m not going to attend your barbeque because I don’t like your kids and your wife gives me dirty looks if we try to leave early.” Sometimes, the guilt eats at us and after six ignored “Evites” and peppy and sassy reminders from the host (“there will be a water slide for the kids! and endless margaritas for the adults! Bring your sombreros, amigos!), we bend to their party people pressure and meekly show up, embarrassed by the “oh, I’m soo glad you could make it!” greetings from the hosts after receiving your lame “we’ll try to make it...lots of yardwork piled up and Susie seems to be fighting a cold” email.  In the end, you actually have a pretty good time and wonder why you hate these things so much. Still, you vow never to go to another barbeque again. At least not one of theirs.

But we’re not the Mayor and we’re not being “invited” to a City Council barbeque requiring a sacrifice of our Saturday afternoon. We’re not being given a window of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and asked to show up at some point to report on something that’s been in the headlines for the past week.

So the fact that Mayor Ray Nagin thought it was appropriate to tell the press and the City Council that he “might” attend today’s City Council meeting about the latest and greatest scandal so far of his recovery leadership (regarding NOAH, New Orleans Affordable Homeownership—summary: they received money for work done primarily by volunteers), to say arrogantly that he’s checking his schedule, then to say that he probably wouldn’t be able to attend—all of this wavering and posturing is even more rude than the white lie excuses we make up to get out of baby showers and work parties we just don’t feel like attending for one small reason or another.

To not attend a Council meeting for political rather than personal avoidance reasons is another matter entirely. To say you have a “scheduling conflict” is just a slap in the face.

Okay, when we get that dreaded invitation to attend a going-away party for a coworker we barely know, we’re probably not being asked to give information about a home remediation program that basically stole money from taxpayers. We’re probably not going to be asked why and how our brother-in-law came to be one of the contractors for the now poisoned program. The worst that may happen is that we have to eat cheap cake and drink non-alcoholic beverages on company property. 

But then, let me remind you, we are not the Mayor of a city suffering like New Orleans. We’re just people trying to make our lives a little less hectic. That two hours spent at the party might better be spent doing nothing but laundry or napping or working out at the gym, but it’s our personal time, and we covet it.

The Mayor has no such luxury. His priority should be the city, especially when it’s in a perpetual crisis like ours.  At a time like this and with a meeting so obviously geared towards solving a problem he helped create (NOAH was a core piece of pride in his 2007 budget), it’s just plain old-fashioned rudeness.

To make matters worse than they needed to be, City Council had to get all pissy with him and send him a letter admonishing him for not attending, which then resulted him into attending. Again, we’ve been there in our personal life. We tell a family member we can’t be at a wedding or a graduation party because of a “scheduling conflict” and all hell breaks loose. After two phone calls from your aunt, a letter from your Grandmother, and seven emails from your sister noting all of the things she’s attended for you over the years, you drag your sorry ass to the event and get treated like the heel that you are.

But, as I said, we’re not the Mayor. And we’re not dissing the City Council.

Only friends and family can be the recipients of our lame excuses. To make the citizens, press, and City Council kick and scream and insult and question your “maybe I’ll attend” and in this very angry manner, essentially beg for your attendance to a meeting that should unquestionably have been a “yes I’ll be there” response from the beginning, just makes us all distrust you that much more.  It makes us that much more bitter.

And quite frankly, it hurts our feelings.  Should we ever be invited to your going-away party, you can be sure we won’t attend. Or maybe we’ll  just say “maybe”.