John Longhurst takes a tongue-in-cheek look at how childhood once meant scraped knees and billy carts, but now comes wrapped in helmets, high-vis and health warnings.
IN A VAIN ATTEMPT to bring forward spring, Know-All Ron held court at a table in the beer garden:
I am serious, it won’t be long before you need a Cert IV in Grandparenting to take kids for a walk to, well, anywhere. Just the other day, I had to wait for my granddaughter to be dressed by her mother in Kevlar jeans, a fluoro, knee guards and safety boots for a trip to the local park. The provided ear muffs were to be used if the traffic noise was too high.
I was then led through a list of safety instructions from a well-researched risk assessment put together by the local parenting group, tailored to the specific dangers of the park. Not only was the risk assessment forwarded to my phone, I also had to follow, to the letter, the preferred satellite navigation directions for the 200-metre walk to the park.
For ‘hydration’ – and that was the word used – ‘DO NOT USE THE BUBBLER’ and ‘only use this specifically labelled water bottle’ was a very clear command.
I was surprised I did not have to sign something before undertaking the expedition. Goodness knows how much trouble I would be in if I slipped my granddaughter the non-organic, sugar-loaded lollies I had in my pocket.
Ron paused for a sip amidst nods of concurrence:
Anyhow, at the park, there are warning signs everywhere about liability and dangers. Parents and carers are pacing up and down, rubbing their hands together, sighing and groaning as children tempted death with a climb up a slippery dip. One parent rushed in with a first aid kit that would meet the needs of a Mount Everest climb when a kid had a tumble from four steps up.
I swear, this parent was about to pull out a defibrillator before the kid bounced back up and started laughing.
Laughs all round, before Mick leaned in:
“Ahhh, you are on the money, Ron. I picked the young bloke up from playgroup last Tuesday and was surprised to see the kids dressed in workwear, with accompanying safety goggles, helmets and steel capped boots — just to play with Lego. My suggestion to install stop/go traffic controllers on either side of the work area, as well as reduced walking speed limits, was taken seriously.”
Timeless Tom shook his head and took a measured sip:
“Safety boots, eh? What a luxury, I say. When I was growing up, the only shoes we had were school shoes and wearing them outside of school was forbidden. It was bare feet summer and winter, catching funnel web spiders to sell to the local ambulance station, hunting snakes in the blackberry bushes by the river, and the only parental instruction was ‘be home by dark’. Well, the skin on the soles of my feet must have been close to half an inch thick as a consequence.”
Tom rubbed his unshaven jaw:
“In fact, I must have stepped on some drawing pins at some time — you know, those little gold ones with the round head. Anyhow, when I was walking across the tiles in the kitchen one morning, the old man looked up from his newspaper and said, ‘Hey, son, when did you take up tap dancing?’”
Chuckles warmed the souls in lieu of the weak winter sun and a long pause before Bazza leaned in:
“I reckon we should talk about billy carts.”
Young Simon’s face lit up:
“William Cartes, eh? He lives up the top of our street. How do you know Billy, Bazza?”
John Longhurst is a former industrial advocate and political adviser. He currently works as an English and History teacher on the South Coast of NSW.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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