Kickin' It: I Survived Childhood?

Coraline and I were yacking behind this screen, yesterday, and my little cardiac episode was one of the conversation's bullet-points. Our talk of my kicking the bucket made me think of "Kick the Can," a juvenile game we played in the street five decades ago (although I think being the noire-writer she is, her mind may have gone to giving my carcass to Bloodmeal, her Rottweiler, to strip the meat from my bones and bury them).


Kick the bucket, kick the can: see how ole folks' mind switch gears?


Maybe you do, but I sure don't see kids jumping rope or playing kick-the-can or even throwing a Frisbee in my neighborhood.


Kids' thumbs and joystick-hand are in perfect shape, because they're innocents who just don't know that Jump Rope, Frisbee and Kick the Can weren't always i-phone apps and gamer's software, but based in reality.


Disgusting as the thought may seem to them and their parents, today's milk-complexioned, butterball-obese, bagged-drink sucking kids don't realize my generation braved the odds, playing those games outside despite neighborhood-trolling perverts, bees, air pollution, UV rays, rabid dogs, errant sprinklers, blast-furnace heat, Mrs. Patrick's rosebushes, skinned knees and elbows, occasional street traffic, getting our canvas ten-buck Keds or Converse shoes dirty, or risking sweat-soaked and grass-stained clothing--and the only rechargers we ever needed were food and sleep.