WHERE HAVE ALL THE CHILDREN GONE?

“No more pencils no more books,
No more teachers dirty looks.”


Many years ago, on the streets of Brooklyn, children would gather in late June to celebrate the end of school. Both the Catholic and public schools let out about the same time and there was joy in the air.

“Break the windows, break the chairs,
Throw the teacher down the stairs!”


Freedom! The passion was greater than the day they liberated Paris in WWII.

As the days progressed through the summer, children all over Brooklyn took out their toy maker, what today we would call: imagination!

Poor kids would collectively own a rubber ball, and in the middle of the streets of Brooklyn, turn the streets into imaginary Ebbets Fields or Yankee Stadiums or even The Polo Grounds. A simple pink rubber ball, an old sawed off broom handle taped for grip, two man hole covers and chalk and you suddenly had a ball field, a field of dreams!

The girls had their world too. The sound of snap, snap, snap as an old gray clothes line was converted into jump rope, one girl on each end turning the rope into a large loop, a cadence of rhythm and rhyme, and the jumpers ready to do their turn, grim determination on their faces, pig tails flapping, little cotton dresses and ankle socks jumping in unison.

The little skip hoping of a single skip rope, a chant that mesmerized the listener who witnessed the eventful flawlessness of it all, as a sister or a girlfriend danced on the one spot, skipping rope.

There were the little games of stoop ball, the boys and girls both playing. “Five, ten, fifteen”… Suddenly the ball returns on the fly instead of a bounce. “OOOH, OOOH one hundred fifteen” and so the games went.

At night the magic came. Games like: Red Light, Green Light, Iron Tag, Simon Says, and Hide and Seek occupied our time until we were called in by mom or dad. “Five minutes more, Ma!” we would call out. “I SAID NOW!!!” was our stern admonishment. And as we left, we could still taste the chocolate from the Bungalow Bar Ice Cream man, Pete, with his pencil moustache.

I can recall my sons going out to play, all day, everyday. When school was over, out they went, and summers meant Little League, and soccer and basketball, and bikes.


And so today I look out on the street. All I see are parked cars, and lawns that are being watered. I see no children! Where are the children, where is the sound of laughter, balls bouncing, playful cheering? Worst yet, is there no one who is developing a personality, a skill, a bag of memories that he can take with him forever? What will he tell his children were his childhood memories? Will he tell them, about a kid named Mookie, or JoJo or Skip, or will he not have anything to tell them? Maybe he can answer with a text message: “No childhood :-(“