There was a time when we dreamt of seeing street lights on a daily basis…or should I rather say, the time that many of us dream of having street lights is our daily reality…Being villagers, we never had many toys to play with, so our creativity was limited to disposed waste products and what we would occasionally watch on tv when the opportunity came.
Soccer, hide and seek, “chicago” (dodgeball), drafts, marbles, etc. were some of the games that helped us develop our creativity. Beyond that, one of the fascinating talents which some of the boys had – and if you didn’t have, you felt a bit left out, was making wire cars which were about the size of an adult shoe-size box.
The sourcing of the raw materials to make these “exotic” wire cars was quite an interesting one – fun and thrilling at times. The tales that we would hear of how the wires were sourced were always a good weekly sunset chronicle – with a bit of spice of course.
Some would claim that they had to break someone’s barb-wired fence, followed by a super-fast sprint to avoid being caught, others would go to the bushes and would have “fun-fear” induced runs, away from bees and sometimes from mysterious wild animals.
I could never verify the wild animals’ part, but I had an almost endless tearful experience of a swarm of ants on my back – resulting in an itchy and burning back overnight. It is also one of the last childhood memories that has vividly stuck in my mind from being over adventurous in the bushes, without permission from the parents – and they probably had fun seeing us in pain through that experience, while at the same time helping our swollen backs recover. They didn’t have to continuously remind us not to play in the bushes – we had a solid strong emotional reminder of the “benefits” that were to follow on a “lucky day” 😊.
Back to the wire cars, most of the boys lost the creativity of making those cars, as they either struggled to find wires to make the cars, as some would progress at schools and move with the “times” as schools never catered for this “backward” creativity. Such a useful skills developed through recreation and at the same time healthy competitiveness – as the pressure to perform was self-induced which just helped in building self-confidence.
I only know of less than a handful who have progressed in academia, but most could be experiencing economic hardships as well as securing jobs that rely on rote learning skills, which were never their strengths to begin with.
One wonders how far their car-making skills would have taken most of the boys – only if they were fully celebrated for these critical skills. Technological developments are on steroids, most rote learning skills are becoming, if not already, redundant. My curiosity is how can we reignite these car-making skills, or is it too late since machines have probably taken over?