As many of you know, Denis Hamill writes for the New York Daily News and he is one of the best in the business. A day doesn’t go by where I don’t click the link on the right side of the blog to see what he has written that day. I have mentioned him many times on Container Diaries. I saw his piece recently on ‘Stickball’ where he thought back to his days as a youngster. Good read via the Daily News.
None of us was obese. No one had childhood diabetes. The term “play date” didn’t exist. We were scared of talking to strangers by true tales of a real-life cannibal named Albert Fish, who allegedly kidnapped, boiled and ate kids who got into his car.
Hamill is right, what’s this shit about “Play dates?” Where and when did it start? My daughter’s nine and I forbid her to use that. And when a friend of hers mentions it, I’m going to tell them, “yo, we don’t use that type of language around here!”
-SF
Hoops135@hotmail.com
Breakin’ the ice in the comments section…
Steve,
You are right about “play dates’. Unfortunately, times have changed. The good part is we became friends with some of the other parents long after the kids stopped hanging together. I think our generation is the last one that grew up playing in the street and had all the freedom
to come and go with the long leash our folks gave us. I think when that kid Etan Patz was kidnapped in 1979, it flipped out the parents and changed childhoods forever.
As Hendley sang,”The end of the Innocence”.
Denis is a great writer with a good sense of humor. He wrote alot of columns after 9/11 mentioning Vinny Brunton and about Dennis Kawas and others. I emailed him in early 2002 and complimented his column and it turns out we have some mutual acquaintances from the neighborhood like Bob Patino, who I work with, and we still email back and forth.
If you read his books, the neighborhood is almost a character, he describes the rowhouses, brownstones,
restaurants, and stores. Farrells is always in there even though the name may be changed. If you read “Empty Stockings” or “Sins of the Fathers”, places like Hippie Hill are mentioned prominently.
I emailed him about the site. Maybe he can be a guest blogger.
He’s great…Hamill that is. I have had numerous contacts with him via email. Gave me some valuable advice on the craft.
I’m sure he has seen the Blog. Probably can’t do any writing for us because of the conflict with the Daily Snooze…I mean News.
(:
Hey Coach,
George Carlin has a whole routine about “Play dates” in his latest show “It’s bad for ya” -
“Play dates…. one more thing that adults are screwin up. Now play has to be scheduled?
What happened to the old days of a kid in the back yard with a stick? You know in a few minutes that stick is going to dig a hole. What happened to sticks anyway? Somehow China has stolen stick production for the entire world? when did this happen?”
I reccommend the Carlin show, lots of interesting brainbits.