Old School Toughness

I watched a comedian yesterday talking about the difference in the way kids today are raised from the way he was raised. He was an older guy, about the age of one of my former students, Andy Foster, who has a Birthday today. Kids today are overly protected in certain areas, like the playground. This guy said when he was a kid the sliding board was about six stories high, and it was made of metal. He said in the summer that the surface of the slide was about 230 degrees, but you went down it so fast you didn’t get burned. On the other hand the sliding boards today are about 4 feet high and made of plastic. A kid scoots a few inches and stops, scoots a few inches and stops. He said it should be called a scoot board.

I remember my elementary school playground. The  equipment included, two huge metal slides, a self propelled merry go round, maybe five swings supported by large  frame metal posts and the seat was a block of splintery wood held in place by log chains. I think there may have been a set of monkey bars. At recess we were turned loose to use that equipment at our own risk. The teachers usually huddled under a shade tree and talked. Boys were sliding down the sliding board head first. Others were standing up on those monstrous swings gathering momentum back and forth until they were parallel with the cross bar at the top of of the swing’s frame. About 25 little kids would get on that merry go round and hold on for dear life while a bigger boy would push it around as fast as he could. That thing went so fast that those second and third graders were a blur as they twirled round and round.

We had a great time at recess. I don’t remember even one kid ever getting seriously hurt during my years of elementary school.

When I became a freshman we no longer had recess, but we had PE. There was a new PE teacher my first year of high school. His name was Coach Bob Birdwhistell. It was his first year as coach and teacher, a tall skinny guy who had an ATTITUDE. One of his favorite activities for the boys was boxing, especially if two of us were having a squabble. Everybody had to box, which was a dilemma for some of those who would do anything to avoid a fight. Coach’s rules made it pretty safe. We wore head gear, the boxing gloves were those big ones that were so heavy some of us had a hard time lifting our arms. And we had to fight on our knees. That doesn’t sound too bad, but the mat we spared on was made of canvas. I think the one we had was from World War 2. It was army green and was so coarse that as we twisted and moved during our bout our knees were scratched and most of the time bleeding when we finished. Just as the days on the playground no one ever got hurt too badly. There were a few bloody noses and some swollen bloody lips.

As far as I know parents didn’t come to school belly aching about how poor Johnny was mistreated, no law suits, and no whiney kids going home to mamma complaining about Coach or the teachers at recess. If they did they were told to stop being a baby and man up. I think the way things were back in the day made us tough, and better prepared us for a world that is hard, unfair and dangerous at times. We learned to be respectful, to work hard, and not to depend on hand outs to get us through life. Yep, a bloody nose and a split lip goes a long way to prepare a person for life.