The Death of Childhood in Winter

When I looked outside today, I saw a layer of freshly fallen snow. There are a lot of winter humbugs out there who look at snow and go back to bed, covers pulled over their heads, silently weeping. Not me. I spent my formative years in Canada’s Northwest Territories where winters were 9 months long, days in winter were 4 hours long and the temperature was more often than not -20 Celsius or below. Now that is a winter to weep about.

When I moved south of the Arctic Circle when I was 13 years old winter was a revelation. It rarely got to – 10 Celsius, even at it’s coldest. You could play outside for over an hour, you only had to wear one pair of socks, icicles did not form on your nostrils and your lip could touch your metal zipper without ripping half of your face off. I always remember that my favorite part of winter was that it lent itself to high energy battle games like red rover, British bulldog and king of the hill as well as the inevitable snowball fight. The ground was covered in soft snow, you were wearing extra padding in the form of parkas and snow-pants and the projectiles were generally pretty light and soft and in any event, broke apart on impact.

 This is no more. Fear has taken over winter. It used to be that after a big snow at my public school, after the ploughs had cleared the parking lot, you could play king of the hill on the mounds of snow. Racing up the hill, trying to knock the person on top into the snow below and then holding your ground until you yourself were knocked off. Good fun, great workout, never saw anyone get hurt. Today, you can no longer play that game because on one hand, you have the people who are afraid of litigation, and on the other hand you have those that believe that such a game promotes aggressive behavior. The same thing goes for Red Rover and British Bulldog. Then of course there is snowball fights, which I learned when I was about 13 years old are a bigger scourge to society than crack and trans fats.

The point I would like to make is that I hear a lot about the lazy generation of obese kids who spend all of their time in front of video-games getting fat and not spending any time out of doors and exercising. The parents and the adults of the generation ahead must take some of the responsibility for this. It is they who have through political correctness and litigiousness, created an environment which causes kids to gravitate away from the outdoor activities and into the basement. Children played the above mentioned games because they are fun and inexpensive and competitive. These are things that children gravitate to.

The question that arises in my mind is a utilitarian one. Which is more beneficial to society, fit children who may sustain some injuries from time to time and who learn their aggressive tendencies from real life circumstances or fat, out of shape children who do not get injured and learn their aggressive tendencies from violent video games.