Take television, in my day we had no cable or remote control, I was my Dad’s remote control, he would tap me on the side of my head with his beer bottle and say “Rob! Change it to channel four, and I would get up and change it. Luckily we only had three channels BBC 1, BBC 2, and CTV the private channel, or I would have got brain damage.
Note: they still do not have a channel #1, it was supposed to be the same channel the New York Taxi’s used in the beginning of Television.
I just hoped the weather was good, or I would have to adjust the “Rabbit Ears”. This entailed standing on one leg holding one of the aerial rods with one hand, and having rolled up silver paper sticking out of my orifices until the cloud cover had dissipated.
One day my Dad came home and announced we were going into the big time with a large TV screen, I was so excited until I realized that all he had done was bought a large square magnifying glass on a frame that was placed in front of the TV screen. It was like watching TV in a Hall of Mirrors at the Carnival.
Parents today take their kids to the Doctors for any little thing: in my day my Mum only had three remedies, Calamine Lotion, Iodine, and Detol. I came home crying one day, “Mum I fell off my bike, and I’ve grazed my knee”. “Get over here and I’ll make it all better with a dab of this Iodine,” she would say. “How’s that,” she would ask, “does it still hurt?” “Well Mum, not if you discount the feeling of being burned by a blow touch, what is that stuff?” Sure it cleared up in a week, but I still have a large red blotch on my knee to remind me of my carelessness.
The other day I was at my Daughters house when her two-year-old Son had to have his temperature taken. My Daughter pulled out from its box a digital thermometer, which she gently poked, in his left ear, to which he sniffled that it hurt, and he did not like it.
In my Day I never dare tell my Mum that I felt sick, or had a headache because she would find a thermometer in its tube in the bottom of the dresser draw. This was Ok when I was a baby because she shoved it up my butt, but when you are older you get to place it under your tongue. I have a younger brother, I never did see two thermometers in our house, and we all know how she cleaned things, with a little spit, and a wipe on her “Pinny, (apron).
What was with the ‘Vicks Vapour Rub’? Someway my Mother would decide that I had the sniffles coming, (probably after a thermometer episode) and demand I remove my Pyjama top so she could rub a half bottle of this patented grease on my chest, and back. Immediately a thick haze of repugnant medication floats around your head, causing your eyes to tear up, and cause liquids to freely flow from your tear ducts, with the added phenomenon of a constant streaming of Snot flowing from both of your nostrils down your chin to end up soaking your pyjama top.
Information about the opposite sex was not encouraged when I was young.
The Cinema was no help in Sex Education, male and female Actors were not allowed in the same bed, so to get around this rule one of them had to have one foot on the floor, out of sight of the Camera of course. The scene would end in an embrace under the covers and the Camera would Pan around to the open window where the curtains would be dancing in the breeze. I still get aroused when my wife leaves the widow open on a summer’s day, and the wind blows on the curtains. I was 17 before I realized that girls were more than just soft boys.
What’s with this “time out” discipline? In my class was a kid named John Gunn, the toughest, meanest 12 year old you would want to meet, and he hassled the teacher, disrupted the class and was full of attitude. One day he went too far, I think he wrestled with the teacher. He was escorted to the Principals office for a small dose of Corporal Punishment. When he returned he was a broken boy, no more attitude, no more disturbances, and was quite a good Guy to have in class.
When has a “time out” changed any attitudes? The only thing they can do is make the student became more bitter with their lot.
Crayola crayons, what was with these? My wife remembers when she first went to school: they came in a package of 8. Then one day a rich girl in her class came with the new box size of 16, and it contained one GOLD crayon, which was the envy of every child in the class. We were discussing this with the waitress at the Clay Pot restaurant, and she says today you can buy a 36 box, which contains silver as well: kids have it easy these days.
The other day I was transporting my Granddaughter home from Grade 1, she was telling me what an exciting day she had. A man from a computer shop had dropped in to demonstrate a new computer, it had no key board, but you wore a little hat with an aerial, and instead of typing in the words you could control the curser by eye contact with the screen, she said it was so simple she got the hang of it straight away. She finally asked me if I ever had any exciting days at the school I went too, and all I could think of was the once a year when the Janitor climbed up on the roof and threw down all the balls that had accumulated up there since the last time.
When I took my electrical apprenticeship I had to study Algebra, Logarithms, Sign, Co-sign, and Tangents, Percentages, Square roots, and the Slide rule. It would take the whole lesson time period to finish one question, and that was if you had not made a mistake. Today apprentices have calculators to figure out any question imaginable, apprentices have it easy today.
In my time as a child, (Post War England) I had to make up games to play. The only toys available were toys that my father made from wood, he was a Carpenter. In London in those days every house had a large garden where the public grew vegetables and raised chickens for the War Effort. My dad hated chickens so much of my day was taken up on feeding the chickens and gathered the eggs.
Dr. Chudacoff's recently published “History of Child's Play”, and argues that for most of human history what children did when they played was roam in packs large or small, more or less unsupervised, and engage in freewheeling imaginative play. They were Pirates and Princesses, Aristocrats and Action Heroes. Basically, says Chudacoff, they spent most of their time doing what looked like nothing much at all.
"They improvised play, whether it was in the outdoors… or whether it was on a street corner, or somebody's back yard," Chudacoff says. "They improvised their own play: they regulated their play: they made up their own rules."
During the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff argues, play changed radically.
The world changed on October 3rd 1995, this was the day that the Mickey Mouse Club debuted on Television. It is no secret that the show became an Icon, and one of the phenomena that helped define an ‘era’.
On that same day another cultural phenomenon that also transformed culture happened, and it is relatively unknown.
This was the day that the Mattel Toy Company began to advertise a gun they called the “Thunder Burp”. Bet you have never heard of it?
The reason this advertisement is significant is because it was the first time that a Toy Company had attempted to sell merchandise on television outside of the Christmas Season. Thus this was a historical watershed, which made almost overnight children’s play became focused, as never before, on objects, the Toys themselves.
"It's interesting to me that when we talk about play today, the first thing that comes to mind are toys," says Chudacoff. "Whereas when I would think of play in the 19th century, I would think of activity rather than an object."
Commercialization was not the only reason the Childs imagination was being eroded: at this time parents became increasingly concerned about their children’s safety from extra traffic and pedophiles. They were forced to create play environments that were secure. Karate classes, gymnastics, summer camps, made for safe environments for children.
Studies suggest that Video games bond Parent and Child.
Last month (August) the video game industry sold over $1 billion of products in North America.
So if next time you are out with your child and he/she keeps wining for you to buy a toy, it’s all because of Mattel who started the information age for children’s toys.
Note: Dr. Howard Chudacoff, is a Cultural Historian at Brown University, and recently published “History of child's play”.
Source:
http://videogames.blogvasion.com/
http://www.crayola.com/colorcensus/history/chronology.cfm
http://www.discovery.com/area/skinnyon/skinnyon971031/skinnyon.html
TGIF.