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garoteWhen I was a kid we had a yearly tradition at our elementary school, where kids would bring collections of marbles to the playground and play games to compete for each others' marbles.
If you wanted to participate, you sat down in the sand with your marbles and smoothed out a patch of sand in front of you to form a runway. Then you stacked marbles in pyramids of varying size and shape at the end of the ramp closest to you. Kids could then come by with their own marbles, and attempt to roll them along the ramp and knock down the pyramid you built. If they did, they got all the marbles in the pyramid. If they failed, you kept the marble they used.
If you didn't want to compete with pyramids, you could open a "store" instead. You just had to sit down in the row along with all the other kids and their ramps, and set out your marbles in a grid, and wait for other kids to come by and make you some kind of trade offer. (Trades were only allowed in marbles - no money or other items.)
For some reason I began thinking just now about this activity of setting up little "stores" that kids sometimes do spontaneously. The most recent example I saw was when some of the kids on our last camping trip picked rocks out of the river and set up "stores" along the riverbank. The kids were siblings to they immediately set to arguing over who was allowed to pick inventory from which part of the river, and the activity quickly devolved into burglary and vandalism, which they thought was tragic, but which I - and the other adults - thought was hilarious.
So I was wondering just now: Why is this a kid activity only? It's clear to my why it's fun: Managing a collection of items and being a salesman requires imagination and decision-making, as well as social skills and an element of competition. It's got a lot of variety. But if it's so fun, why don't adults do it too?
Well, aside from everyone just being too busy to play, there's something else: There's just no place to get "free" stuff, and no one around who finds it interesting enough to barter for.
I mean, let's say I wanted to open a store just now. First thing I'd need is inventory. What's around me? Well, burritos, jewelry, clothing, bike parts, interesting plants, chocolate bars ... loads of stuff, really ... but as soon as I tried to pick any of it up and arrange it in my "store", someone would say, "hey, that's mine!" or "hey, you gotta pay for that, you jerk!!"
So, it would quickly turn into a chase scene and probably an arrest. Maybe I could play "Yakety Sax" on my phone as I ran around trying to gather enough things before angry owners took me down. I probably wouldn't ever get to open my "store", let alone haggle for anything. No fun.
That's the trouble with adulthood I guess. All the stuff you're interested in is owned - either by someone right there, or someone who has hired other people to stand guard. Perhaps it takes a kid, deciding to play "store", to remind adults that kid stuff can still be interesting, even rocks and sticks - as long as you get to arrange it in a little grid and haggle over it with people you like. (Or lacking them, your siblings. Hah!)
If I could open a spontaneous store, it would a "neighborhood cat store".
Herding the "inventory" all into one place would be totally impossible of course.
If you wanted to participate, you sat down in the sand with your marbles and smoothed out a patch of sand in front of you to form a runway. Then you stacked marbles in pyramids of varying size and shape at the end of the ramp closest to you. Kids could then come by with their own marbles, and attempt to roll them along the ramp and knock down the pyramid you built. If they did, they got all the marbles in the pyramid. If they failed, you kept the marble they used.
If you didn't want to compete with pyramids, you could open a "store" instead. You just had to sit down in the row along with all the other kids and their ramps, and set out your marbles in a grid, and wait for other kids to come by and make you some kind of trade offer. (Trades were only allowed in marbles - no money or other items.)
For some reason I began thinking just now about this activity of setting up little "stores" that kids sometimes do spontaneously. The most recent example I saw was when some of the kids on our last camping trip picked rocks out of the river and set up "stores" along the riverbank. The kids were siblings to they immediately set to arguing over who was allowed to pick inventory from which part of the river, and the activity quickly devolved into burglary and vandalism, which they thought was tragic, but which I - and the other adults - thought was hilarious.
So I was wondering just now: Why is this a kid activity only? It's clear to my why it's fun: Managing a collection of items and being a salesman requires imagination and decision-making, as well as social skills and an element of competition. It's got a lot of variety. But if it's so fun, why don't adults do it too?
Well, aside from everyone just being too busy to play, there's something else: There's just no place to get "free" stuff, and no one around who finds it interesting enough to barter for.
I mean, let's say I wanted to open a store just now. First thing I'd need is inventory. What's around me? Well, burritos, jewelry, clothing, bike parts, interesting plants, chocolate bars ... loads of stuff, really ... but as soon as I tried to pick any of it up and arrange it in my "store", someone would say, "hey, that's mine!" or "hey, you gotta pay for that, you jerk!!"
So, it would quickly turn into a chase scene and probably an arrest. Maybe I could play "Yakety Sax" on my phone as I ran around trying to gather enough things before angry owners took me down. I probably wouldn't ever get to open my "store", let alone haggle for anything. No fun.
That's the trouble with adulthood I guess. All the stuff you're interested in is owned - either by someone right there, or someone who has hired other people to stand guard. Perhaps it takes a kid, deciding to play "store", to remind adults that kid stuff can still be interesting, even rocks and sticks - as long as you get to arrange it in a little grid and haggle over it with people you like. (Or lacking them, your siblings. Hah!)
If I could open a spontaneous store, it would a "neighborhood cat store".
Herding the "inventory" all into one place would be totally impossible of course.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-16 03:25 am (UTC)When I was 7, I was thinking about setting up a little shop where I would sell and buy books. Much later I figured that I would have been arrested for that. USSR.