Just a Box?

When I was a kid growing up on the streets of Brooklyn we made adventures up every day and would use whatever we had and our imaginations. There were tons of kids all over my neighborhood, you were known for which street you lived on, that was your "crowd" but you played with everyone.

Whenever someone had a big box put out in the garbage, especially a refrigerator box, that was a couple of days worth of adventure and fun for us. You even visited other blocks if you heard they had a big box. Hours and hours of fun just playing with a box. Babies still do that today, you buy them a great toy and they end up playing with the box instead of the toy, using their built-in imaginations.

I remember my oldest niece who we spoiled terribly with everything she wanted or didn't want, would play in the kitchen cabinets with the pots and pans for hours, we even bought her pots and pans of her own but playing with the real ones in the cabinets was more fun. Using that built-in imagination.

Everything is so organized now for kids, besides the fact that they have their video games and can play for hours all by themselves, they don't get to use their imaginations at play like we did growing up. I understand why it has to be that way, it's just not safe anymore for kids to go out and play by themselves, but it's sad. My brother Joey's kids are so lucky, they live on a dead end street with a bunch of kids and they play by themselves. They use their imaginations. They fight. They make up. They just "play". No parents, nothing organized, kids making the rules, learning some of life's lessons on the streets with their peers. You can't buy that.

For over a year now my neighbors have been redoing their home, boxes galore, and not one of them picked up by a kid, that house would have been one that would be checked on daily in the neighborhood when I was growing up. Someone getting deliveries all the time, there may be a box, let's go check!

We would pile into the box, as many as we could fit and roll down the street, not caring where the box was taking us or the fact that we were all rolling around inside this box all over each other, we just had fun and if the box fell apart, you used it for something else, built something, made a ramp, colored it. We made clubhouses. I can remember bringing boxes home, to keep them safe overnight and my mom telling me to "get rid of that box". But it had to stay somewhere safe so the garbage men wouldn't take it, it was still a good box, hours more of fun to get out of.

Just a box?