Come Play
with Me!
Written By Lynne Bertrand
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Does being a grown-up mean you've outgrown child's play? C'mon, you know you have it in you. Here are some playful ideas for outing your inner child.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, every free-ranging kid in my New Hampshire neighborhood (everyone out of diapers) lived to get outside and play. A knock at the door — "You coming?" "Be right out" — was the rising of a velvet stage curtain. There was a great troupe of us. We mucked around in the polliwog pond, spied on each other's hideouts, skidded around on trikes and banana bikes, played school, played house, played kickball till it was too dark to run the bases.
Parents? I never met most of the other kids' parents. They worked behind the scenes, ready with extra cardigans and bologna sandwiches, ready to call little kids back into their yards or big kids offstage for supper. Our play, full of adventure and squabbles, ran brilliant and glorious alongside the adults' workaday world.
