Dear child, I want you to give up video games for grass stains. I want you to run wild and free through the streets of your neighborhood on a hot summer afternoon, tiring yourself so thoroughly that you can barely make it to the bed before you put pajamas on and brush your teeth. I would like to see you skin your knees and elbows. I would like to see you stain the soles of your feet green and brown and cause your mother to shake her head as she scrubs so hard to get it off, but it won't until the first chill of autumn drives your shoes back on your feet. I want you to show me what a fort looks like and just how you would build it. I want you to rummage through scrap piles and find wonderfully odd pieces of wood and the like and build a fort, and then I dare you boys to keep the girls out; it won't work, I promise. I want to see you, when you're tired, sitting in the shade of a giant tree, sipping lemonade poured from the stand you set up, leftover after you sold a few nickels' worth to a passerby. I would like to see you and your friends on your bikes, towels slung over your shoulders, riding furiously to the local pool or the water hole. I want to see you on your way back, pedaling a little slower, no worse for the wear, but rightly tired just the same. I want to you play tag in your front yard. I want you to play pickle on the sidewalk, and put together a few pickup games of baseball on a lazy summer afternoon. I want to see you at bat imitating your favorite player, not at screen, seeing a virtual image of him as he plays a game you control with a joystick. Dear child, I want to see you give up the passive mannerisms we've taught you and just go outside and find out what outside is all about. I want to see you pick up frogs and dig for worms. I want to see you find simple pleasures and joy from merely picking up a dandelion and blowing it into the sky, watching those little feathery pieces float in the sunlight, your face lit up, ear to ear. I want to see you give up the frustrations of a life inside, or on the cell phone, and head back out where the world is more than a text message or an e-mail to a friend. It's where friends meet, or happen upon one another, and days are spent just doing whatever, imagining things and creating games so fanciful and imaginative that suddenly it's late, and your parents are worried, and you might be in for it now because you missed your curfew. Dear child, I would like to see you jump in the puddles outside your house in the rain or even play a silly game of hide and seek. I just want to see you, outside, playing, away from video games and computers and cell phones and televisions. I want to see you having the kind of fun that can only happen because you're bored, and forced to create something out of nothing. That's what I would like for you, child, as summer nears. - Cox News Service __
