Children are always
curious and inquisitive, but parents are not always around to see
what their offspring do to find answers.
I was about ten years old,
and my older sister, Elsa, was almost three years my senior. Our
neighbour had two sons older than us, and two daughters of more or
less the same age as us, all of which were unholy naughty. And there
were some Dutch people a little further down the road who also had
two sons – equally impossible to rule.
On the night I'm talking
about, all these naughty boys, ranging in age from about eleven to
eighteen, were kicking up a raucous at the cement dam that was close
to the main road. It was a balmy night, no wind and pleasantly warm.
Where we girls sat on the porch of the our neighbour's home we
couldn't see what was going on at the dam, but everytime a car came
down the road to the T-junction opposite the dam, there was yelling
and laughter. So we girls had to investigate of course. Fun had to be
shared, and we had to investigate.
My older sister, me, and
the neighbour's two girls crept through the long grass towards the
dam. The brakes of the windmill standing next to it, was fastened so
the blades couldn't move, and it was safe to stand on the platform
just below it.
As we sneaked
closer, we could see movement on the platform above. The boys were
talking and laughing, completely unaware of the eyes watching them
from the cover of the darkness and the long grass beneath. At that
moment a car came down the road, sweeping it's headlights across the
scene by the dam. We watched in surprise as we saw the four
scoundrels jump completely naked from the platform into the water.
We giggled and
whispered and sniggered and gasped and eventually decided to go
closer to get a better look. Well, of course we had to get a closer
look! You must remember, that was way back in the late fifties, and
skinny dipping was just whispered about as a terrible sin! Girls then
wore pumps and gathered skirts, and often plaited their hair, wooing
was still the norm, and virginity wasn't laughed at.
The boys didn't see
us when we scurried across the open space to the dam because they
were already up there again waiting for the next car. But ... so were
we down here, wide eyed and full of breathless anticipation.
When the headlights
swept across their buts and everything else, they jumped from the
platform in two's with the light from the car brilliantly white like
a huge spotlight on them. That is when I found out that men came in
different sizes and it had nothing to do with how tall they stand in
their socks. Quite a shock for a ten year old girl.
 |
| Big and small? What are the odds! |
Anyway, we stood up and
showed ourselves as the boys came helplessly falling down towards the
water below, shouting and yelling at us all the way. This time the
shouting and yelling was different because it was tinged with anger
and shock.
Oh, we laughed and thought
it very funny. The boys on the other hand, were ready for murder, so
we turned and ran, not forgetting to pick up their clothes on our way
to the house. We had to make sure they didn't catch up with us before
we reached it though.
And there our parents
were, demanding to know what was going on. We were all grounded, the
boys included, but to this ten year old it was definitely worth it
... over and over again.
Kids will always be
kids – curious and adventurous. I enjoyed my children from the day
they were born, and their tiny hands and feet fascinated me. I gave
them all the love I could, I told them fairy tales of princes and
dragons and allowed them to use their imagination to the full. Later
people told me that it was wrong, and children shouldn't grow up with
fairy tales in their heads, but I shrugged such comments off as
nonsense.
Today all my children are
well balanced adults. None of them had ever been on drugs or took a
wrong turn in life. They still enjoy fantasy in movies, but they have
their feet firmly on the ground, knowing that they are allowed to be
themselves.
In the seventies
when my eldest son was born, the teachings of a certain Dr. Spock was
much discussed. I never bought into his ideas, but many of my friends
did. They never spanked their children, and treated them like little
adults. The end product was not what they had in mind at all.
My sister had four
children, two boys and two girls. She and her husband had enough
money to buy their kids everything they wanted or needed. By the time
they were in grade 7 they were into drugs, except for the eldest
daughter who became seriously dependent on medication.
Eventually the youngest
son died of Heroin and the second daughter took her own life.
Now, I want to know
– If this Dr Idiot Spock had never wrote his books or influenced
people the way he did, wouldn't the world have been a better place, a
place where kids could still be kids and enjoy innocent fun like we
did on that balmy night in summer by the cement dam? What I see
around me, are young people with no manners with a dark side to them
that's very unsettling.
Spock admitted on his
deathbed that he had been wrong in his teachings, but unfortunately
the damage had already been done. We see more and more the products
of those teachings in people who believe that they are better than
others, people who doesn't care about what happens to their elderly
parents, people who believe they have the right to insult, to laugh
at others, to belittle, et cetera.
No wonder people long for
those days long gone when right was right and wrong was wrong, and
good fun could still be enjoyed.
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