HMPRESENTLY: Magical Self-Organized Childhood Moments

I’ll never forget what I now realize was “self-organized childhood play,” from reading, the other day, Bill Hudson’s editorial, “Solving Pagosa’s Child Care Shortage.”

Quite some time ago, when I was a kid, playing with neighbor kids, we had such fun! In our imagination, a front yard or backyard became a tropical forest, a corral in a western movie, a farm… and we would play for hours on end.

While we had no idea, back then, how much we were gaining, and learning, from ‘play’.

I’m pretty sure we’d all agree, we learned a heck of a lot.

We were producing and directing dramas, and comedies, and adventures, sharing ideas and concepts, sometimes rehearsing roles we might play, and then actually going into production.

Just imagining midwestern vegetation as something entirely different from what it was, seeing elm trees and fir trees as rain forest foliage, or Russian Sage as cactus plants.

And when the neighbor kids were off doing other things, I remember rolling my toy tractors and bulldozers into our backyard garden, and pushing the toys around, while making the sounds earth-moving and digging machines might make, as my imaginary construction workers were building roads and carving out basements for new homes. With toy blocks, I’d create bridges.

Those self-organized childhood moments… they were magical.

Harvey Radin

Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.