Digital versus traditional outdoor entertainment

At a dinner the other night I was quite impressed to see teenagers accompanying their parents. It’s nice to see a family doing things together as opposed to each one absorbed in ‘exclusive’ entertainment.

However, after a short while, I realised that you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The siblings had soon whipped out their cellphones and were engaged in games and texting. Every now and then they were forced out of their absorption by their mother who tried her best to rouse them from their trance-like state to acknowledge newly arriving guests or answer a question posed to them.

I suppose I should be happy they weren’t running around and getting in everyone’s way, shrieking loud enough to make a banshee envious. Maybe they were too old for that kind of entertainment. But perhaps it would have been nice to see them keeping themselves occupied without the help of an electronic device.

That’s when it struck me how times have changed. When we were young, all our fun was had playing outdoor and board games as well as reading. We often had to tear ourselves away from a fascinating read to attend to chores.

Now that I think about it, was this another kind of absorption? But our parents never complained about this addiction. Old games have been in the spotlight recently here in the UAE with their promotion at various festivals. Emirati elders bemoan the loss in popularity of such pastimes.

They are trying their best to revive interest in this intangible cultural heritage by holding forums focusing on age-old traditions.

Simple pleasures

The game of hopscotch we girls played helped to while away the time on long summer afternoons when we refused to be seduced by sleep. We picked up broken pieces of chalk in the classroom and used these to draw the squares on concrete surfaces.

Sometimes someone would get hopping mad if they thought another had overstepped the mark. Arguments would fly back and forth as the player tried her best to remain balanced on one leg. One couldn’t put one’s foot down in more ways than one.

Playing with marbles was another great way of passing the time. Although I had no real interest in the game itself (after acknowledging to myself that my aim wasn’t perfect), I loved the feel and look of the marbles with their rich veins of colour.

They reminded me of the swirly decorative snowflake toys that fascinated me as a child. So, they became more of a collector’s item. Invariably, the boys monopolised this game and the glee on their faces when they returned home dirty and sweaty but triumphant and laden with hard-won prizes, was a sight worth beholding.

Yet another game involved throwing five pebbles up in the air. There was a method to this madness. They had to be picked up in certain numbers as the game progressed and in a variety of holds, then tossed in the air and caught before they hit the earth.

Most of these games involved no expense and a certain amount of dexterity. They kept us occupied and our parents’ pockets untouched. It was a win-win situation.

The game of charades was a staple on rainy days. Through this medium we learnt role play and the art of communicating much without saying anything at all

When I see how inept I am at computer games or fast texting to send messages flying back and forth, I comfort myself with the thought that if the kids of today were made to play the games we played, they would find themselves equally at sea.

Of course, I’m not betting on this as you can’t write off a generation which can master any gadget within minutes without help from a manual.