Charles Kong Soo

I'm al­ways amazed watch­ing chil­dren riv­et­ed in front their Xbox 360, Nin­ten­do Wii and Playsta­tion3 con­soles to­tal­ly ab­sorbed in their gamers uni­verse play­ing video games. I thought Grand Theft Au­to was about steal­ing cars not ul­tra-vi­o­lent gun bat­tles. When my friends ask if I would like to play a video game, I tell them I nev­er learned in earnest be­cause I'm left-hand­ed and I don't need to learn how to veer a plane left or right and not prac­tice land­ing. Chil­dren sure are grow­ing up fast. I'm glad I'm not a par­ent hav­ing to ex­plain the de­tails of an anatom­i­cal­ly cor­rect doll to their chil­dren. In this tech­no­log­i­cal age of video games, com­put­ers and on­line en­ter­tain­ment, as chil­dren spend more time in­doors in front a tele­vi­sion and video screen, how many skills and ex­pe­ri­ences are slow­ly be­ing lost? With the in­tro­duc­tion of dig­i­tal clocks chil­dren are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to learn how to tell time on a tra­di­tion­al ana­logue clock with hands and a face and may even have to be re-taught how to tie shoelaces as there are now twist and lock shoelace sys­tems.

How many chil­dren to­day know how to climb a tree, pitch mar­bles, build their own toys or how to pelt man­go? How many chil­dren to­day have had the ex­hil­a­rat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of out­run­ning a pack of dogs hot on their heels when you pass the old woman in the neigh­bour­hood's house? T&T Guardian car­toon­ist/il­lus­tra­tor Kei­th An­der­son re­mem­bers his child­hood days fond­ly filled with canal jock­ey rac­ing, mak­ing spool trac­tors, con­struct­ing wood­en go-carts and scoot­ers with ball-bear­ing wheels. "To make your pal­let stick jock­ey go faster in the canal, boys would rub can­dle wax on the bot­tom of their craft," An­der­son said. "You won't be­lieve the speeds we could reach com­ing down a steep hill in those go-carts and scoot­ers and it was es­pe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous com­ing round a hair­pin curve, but it was thrilling!" I learned the hard way not to en­ter mar­ble or top games with toys made with in­fe­ri­or ma­te­ri­als when the in­ten­tion was to de­stroy your toys. A glass big goongs will get pul­verised when hit by a steel slug and a fac­to­ry-made top will be split in two by a gua­va wood top's nail.

I took up kite-fly­ing for a ne­far­i­ous pur­pose when I was in sec­ond form in Queen's Roy­al Col­lege. When we were play­ing our crick­et and foot­ball games dur­ing break and lunch time in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, the first form stu­dents would be fly­ing their kites over our field. Some­times their kites would aiyo and fall among us dur­ing our game. When it be­came too fre­quent, we won­dered if the first for­m­ers were de­lib­er­ate­ly do­ing it, whole Sa­van­nah to fly their kites and they were com­ing down on us with al­most pin-point ac­cu­ra­cy. I racked my brains for a so­lu­tion and asked my­self how to have some fun in the process. I de­cid­ed to make a sling­shot and try to knock the kites out of the air if they flew too close over us. Armed with my home-made sling­shot made from a wood­en fork and bi­cy­cle tub­ing, I be­gan launch­ing stone pro­jec­tiles at the pesky kites, but to my dis­may they dart­ed out of range. I had my "Eu­re­ka" mo­ment like Archimedes the Greek in­ven­tor and found my so­lu­tion, fight fire with fire, use a kite to sweep the skies of kites. The in­ten­tion was to build a rugged kite out of brown pa­per in­stead of kite pa­per and ram it kamikaze-style in­to the kites.

As soon as my friends spot­ted the kites stray­ing over­head they told me to send up our kite to in­ter­cept them. When the first for­m­ers saw the ma­raud­ing ter­mi­na­tor kite ap­proach­ing they scat­tered. The de­sign draw­back of our kite was it sac­ri­ficed speed and ma­noeu­vra­bil­i­ty for stur­di­ness but no kite stayed to tan­gle with it. One of my school­mates said we should make it more of­fen­sive and add a sting in its tail in the form of ra­zor blades and he would bring a roll of type­writer rib­bon for the tail. Every­one watch­ing the sky could see our kite ap­proach­ing like an aer­i­al preda­to­ry shark, the sliv­ers of ra­zor blades in it's tail glint­ing in the sun. I nev­er downed a kite but the first for­m­ers be­gan fly­ing their kites away from us af­ter that. We be­moaned the per­cep­tion that the stu­dents en­ter­ing af­ter us were get­ting too "in­to com­fort," as we played our match, we were dis­tract­ed and watched in­cred­u­lous­ly as some of the first for­m­ers laid out a pic­nic cloth and pic­nic lunch in the Sa­van­nah.

We couldn't call them child­ish be­cause it was my class who start­ed sling­shot fights us­ing rub­ber­band sling­shots and pa­per "bul­lets" and in­dulged in scooch and hail­ing. On one oc­ca­sion a fe­male teacher held her Eng­lish class out­doors un­der the trees of the col­lege grounds. One boy was at the back of the class hid­ing and play­ing with his yoyo. The teacher spot­ted him and told him to hand over his yoyo. We though he was go­ing to get "buffed" good and prop­er un­til Miss told him "Boy, you're do­ing it wrong!" Miss must have been a tomboy in her youth as she ex­e­cut­ed some deft tricks with the yoyo like in­tri­cate whirls, "walk­ing the dog" and "sleep­ing." Try and en­cour­age chil­dren to put down the video game for a while and spend a lit­tle more time out­doors, show them how to make crown-cork whizzers and tin can tele­phones, let them in­ter­act with oth­er chil­dren, play team games like foot­ball, crick­et, let them get their hands dirty pitch­ing mar­bles, catch and hide and seek. By do­ing so they will make friends, de­vel­op mo­tor-hand-eye co-or­di­na­tion, so­cial skills and get more ex­er­cise.