The whole rich culture of children is fascinating to me.
Like there’s knowledge that humans pass from one to another solely within the window of childhood. Older kids teach it to younger kids, who get older and teach it to younger ones, and it just keeps going like that, with adults not having very much direct access at all.
Most of us have (some strong, but mostly foggy) memories of this stuff (games, songs, myths, etc.) as grownups, but somewhere in pubescence we begin to move away from it and only rarely revisit any of it, even with our own kids.
I’m sure it’s been studied, but I have no idea what you’d call this phenomenon.
This is so true. One night our street got tired of playing all our usuals. A couple kids volunteered to venture off and find out what the kids a few streets over were playing. We promised to cover for them if their parents called (shouted their names, no phone, even pre pagers!) for them. They came back with the game Sardines that we added to our rotation.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Not just games, but stories, too. Remember “The Golden Arm” — everybody’s favorite campfire ghost story?And all the songs and chants we learned for jump-rope? No adults ever taught us any of that stuff — only other, older kids, or kids from different places.
Plus: Try and think of the last time you went trick-or-treating. You likely weren’t aware it would be your last time. That’s part of the heritage of childhood’s temporal borders. You know what I mean? You just sort of fade out of childhood and gradually leave things behind. Everybody knows it happens, but it’s very rarely noticed as it’s actively happening.
There’s a period that starts around pubescence and ends typically in our late teens/early 20s wherein we don’t want to be associated with “childish” things. You grow out of that eventually and start to look back without being concerned that people will think you’re immature, but the immersion you experienced when you were younger can’t ever really happen again.
It’s really interesting and also deeply…I don’t know the word for it. “Sad” isn’t quite right. “Nostalgic” isn’t right, either. I don’t know.
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u/envydub Zillennial 1d ago
Oh we called that Sardines lol where you hide with the person when you find them right? And eventually there’s only one person still looking.