All That Snow and No Kids Out Playing

Yesterday I drove into work later than usual (worked later than usual too). That means I drove down several miles of residential streets to get there. As I was driving I noticed that something was missing - there were no kids out playing. Despite the fact that there were huge piles of snow everywhere, either from plows dumping it here and there or from people piling it up near he curb while shoveling there were no snow tunnels with kids crawling in and out of them, no snow forts with kids attacking them and other kids defending them, and there was not one snowball flying through the air. Likewise, I have not seen almost any kids out sleigh riding. I have passed spots that used to be literally covered by scores of sleigh riding kids right after a good snow and those places have been empty of children. Since Sunday I have seen only 3 kids with sleds.

It was not that long ago that my son would have been out there with his buddies having fun in the snow with all I mentioned above - maybe as recently as 7 or 8 years ago by my guess. Other kids used to do likewise all the way back to a very long time ago; so where are all the kids today? What are they doing instead of having snowball fights and sleigh riding? Is their a virtual snowball fight game out on Nintendo or Xbox? Does Wii have a virtual sleigh ride game? Or is it that kids just have become intolerable homebound wussies because their parents have steered them in that direction due to political correctness, police who would arrest them for assault if they throw a snowball or lawyers who would sue their parents for the family home and life savings if they broke a window or if someone slipped and fell on snow they got on the sidewalk while playing? Maybe I just drove past all the wrong places and they were out elsewhere but to tell the truth I have not seen more than 3 kids out enjoying themselves in the snow since Sunday! It just baffles me that they would forsake all that good, wholesome, healthy, normal type of active fun, that only comes with a good sized snowfall, for anything else.

All the best,
GB