Alma Mater in Winter

It usually wasn't easy or fun to walk the almost two miles to RHS during the winter months. Yes, I didn't have to do it everyday, and I didn't have to carry a ten pound pack. Though it was a challenge on those days I did have to do it. It did keep us lean and I do marvel at how skinny we looked in pictures. The good part, if want to be like me and try to find the bright side, was that it was down hill from our house in Upper Ridgewood. This gave us an extra push in our efforts to arrive at school on time. When it came time to go home I was often involved in sports which meant I could catch a ride with a parent or someone old enough to drive. Then as now parents didn't like their children walking home in the dark or even the late afternoon. Some would say that parents today are too much involved with looking after their kids. I would say it probably is about the same in Ridgewood. In fact, with all the two income families today we might have had more supervision and not even known it. I suppose the difference to me is that there were fewer activities like video games and cell phones which would have kept us inert and at home. Yes, we watched a fair amount of TV but how much can you watch when there were only about 6 channels (2,4,5,7,9,11,13) and the UHF (ultra high frequency) channels? More likely than not, and no matter the weather, we were ordered outside to play in the neighborhood. This helped keep us lean and likely made us more socially engaged than the kids today who spend time playing video games, texting friends, and listening to music. (Often all at the same time!) I'm not ready to say one is truly better than another but I'm leaning towards making the kids get outside and just play with no structured leagues and/or lessons. Just play, just look around and watch the world go by. Remember just lying on your back in the grass and staring at the clouds and commenting on what they looked like?