Spoiled Childhood, part two - Where does love grow best?

There can be no doubt that as a people we have embraced the maxim "bigger is better." We see it in cars - or trucks and vans rather - which have enough space for more than half a dozen people though they are often only transporting one or two. We see it in restaurant meals which, for me at least, easily provide dinner one night and lunch for the next two days. And we see it in houses - boy, do we see it in houses.

Not only the houses but their accoutrements as well. In the neighborhood next to ours, arguably the nicest one in town, the homes are large and well-kept. In one of these homes lives a family of three - mom, dad and little girl of about seven. The house is huge, of course, with probably four times as many rooms as people living in them, and toward the back of the manicured two-acre lot sits a large, empty play set.

I'm always a little incredulous as I stare at this play set. Situated on a 40x25, wood chip-filled plot, it has several slides, a couple of towers, swings, a sliding pole and more. It occurs to me that there is actually more equipment there than there is on the playground at the small parochial school where I substitute teach. And it exists for only one child, at least in theory - I'm not sure I've ever actually seen this little girl playing on it.

Now when I was a kid we had a swing set - it was metal with a short slide that burned your butt in the summer but was great for climbing, all four feet of it. There were also two swings and a glider, which my mother used to sit in with my baby sister.

My other sister, our best friend and I spent many hours on this swingset, only some of them using the equipment as it was meant to be used. The metal bars between the legs were great for practicing front and back flips, in preparation for our future Olympic appearances. Often we took the swings down and went back and forth, hand over hand, across the entire six-foot expanse of the set. We also liked to just swing, sometimes singing as we sailed up and down. We hatched an elaborate scheme to stay on the swings for as many hours as it would take to break a Guiness World Record. When our mothers wouldn't cooperate in that plan by bringing our dinners out to us we set out to create the world's longest gum wrapper chain. It got pretty long - seven or eight feet, I'd say - before we got bored and went looking for another way to get our names in the record books.

Our swing set was not firmly anchored in the ground - the legs would come up as we went higher and higher - and it was on ordinary grass rather than a layer of wood chips over black plastic. But we survived with nothing but minor scrapes and bruises, plus a few fingers pinched in the metal swing chains (no plastic sleeves to prevent that back then). My friend did break her ankle once, but that was while playing Spud.

But while the playset I see in the yard of this little girl puts the one of my own childhood to shame, I do not envy her, neither do I feel shame for providing my own children when they were small with just a modern version of my own modest play set. As I said, I don't see the little girl playing on this elaborate setup. There's probably not much time in between all the lessons and sports practices we feel are necessary for children's development today. And when she does manage to find a minute to just sit on a swing, it's probably not much fun without a friend. It's hard to find overlapping play time when your friends are as busy attending sports practices and learning to dance and meeting with private tutors as you are.

And there is one of today's biggest ironies. We have such large, lovely homes and such so many entertaining toys - yet we're never around to enjoy them. It's like our homes are just a place at which to stop off, change our clothes, catch a few zzzs and then take off again. A big part of that is because mom and dad are working their tails off trying to keep the family in big homes and toys.

My favorite comic when I was a kid was the Archie series and my favorite character was Veronica (the rich girl with the killer bod, of course). But I always felt a little sad for Veronica, too, especially after one particular comic ran. In the story, Veronica was wandering around her mansion comparing it to the "crackerboxes" her friends lived in. Neither parent was around - they were probably at the opera or some such millionaire activity - and Veronica was going from room to room congratulating herself on the blessings of living with her own bowling alley, movie theater, etc. Finally she looked a little sad and lonely then grabbed the phone to call her friend Betty and ask if she could spend the night at Betty's house. Once they were snuggled in Betty's cozy bedroom Veronica exclaimed "People who live in crackerboxes are the luckiest people in the world!"

Strange that a comic book story should have such an influence on me but all these years later I still remember that one and believe in its message. For a good portion of my grown-up family life we lived in a "crackerbox," at least as compared to the homes of our friends. My two girls had to - prepare yourself to be shocked - share a room (does that qualify as child abuse these days?) and the rooms were small enough to make the kitchen table seem a more attractive setting for doing homework. There were just two bathrooms (one more than my family had when I was growing up!) and I became an expert at getting rid of clutter because we just didn't have a lot of extra storage space.

About four years ago we moved to our present home, which has twice the living space. I'm glad we did - I really love our house and yard and the neighborhood in which they sit - but sometimes I am a little wistful for the old crackerbox. These days everyone separates after dinner to bedrooms or sitting areas - we can easily each have a room to ourself. Part of that is a function of having teenagers instead of small children but part of it is that we're not as good at sharing space as we used to be. No one wants to wait for a bathroom. The girls tell me having the computer and the piano in the same room is not such a good plan because they distract each other. Patience, longsuffering, doing without - not so much a part of life as we know it anymore. And it is amazing how STUFF expands to fill empty space (more on that in my next post).

I wonder how many important life lessons our children lose when homes are designed more for show and convenience and less for cooperation. Just the simple act of sharing a room teaches volumes about courtesy, patience and just getting along. It can also actually be kind of fun to have someone to talk to while you're trying to fall asleep at night. My own daughter who is leaving for college in the fall is currently bunking with her sister while we repaint and recarpet her room. She's having so much fun, she said, she wants to continue (her sister, however, is missing her privacy). Unfortunately, I believe there are many college-aged kids whose first experience with sharing a room is in the dorm. Kind of a rude awakening, I expect.

If they can suffer through that year of torture, however, paradise awaits in their off campus apartment. Gone are the days of ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. Today's college crowd regularly hits the local restaurants even though their apartment kitchens provide all the modern kitchen conveniences, like dishwashers and microwaves. And that roommate thing - so yesterday! Whereas my college apartment involved six twin bed in three bedroom, my son moved into his apartment to his own room with a full size bed. The twin bed accessories I had bought for him showed my ignorance of the plush lifestyle young people can expect today.

As a society we are pretty focused on convenience and comfort. Not terrible things to enjoy, of course, yet I think the overemphasis on them compromises another important c-word - character. As our economy shows more and more signs of weakening I can't help but wonder how the current generations of both adults and children will handle scaling back their lifestyles. I don't think it will be our finest moment.