Outdoor fun

 

When people think about boys at play they tend to think of things such as playing with objects such as model cars, aircraft or whole miniture worlds such as model railways often with others.

If that's not the case they are thinking of games either indoors ones such as board games and role playing games or outdoor games such as tag, cowboys and indians and as I did war games.

Thing is boys do play in other ways such as this boy who is drawing with chalk on the pavement which is something we tend to see more girls doing making the street scene far more interesting for children of all ages than what the groan ups put there.

That's the kind of thing I love too.

Seeing things in 3D

As we get into spring which takes me into spring cleaning I thought I'd look at things I recall from the past

One thing I remember having asa boy was a ViewMaster Viewer which used natural light to view still images that were mounted on a card wheel that rotated.

Technically speaking each frame used super 8 film with each image coming as a pair taken stereoscopically so when viewed through the viewer you had a three dimensional image.

There were may packs of images in set that covered disney films, cartoons, tv shows and cool scientific things like space.

I loved using mine and until around the 1990's it was still here living on the bottom shelf of the vegetable rack.

Ending the colour bar tyranny for boys

There was always this issue growing up around what colour tops boys could wear as it appeared some colours were seen as okay for boys such as red, blue, yellow or orange and others such as pink were not in any form.

This in 1972/3 would of been unthinkable.

A boy in pastel horizontal stripes and pink play shorts both specifically marked to and for boys in much the same way mens soccer teams do wear pink tops and shorts too.

I'm actually very glad todays boys and young men have a much wider range of colours they can wear without fear of ridicule, bullying or even assault and only wished we'd had that.

 

Options

There are other ways of being LB beyond the grey short trousers form of presentation and that includes wearing Kilts.

This does happen within scouting for instance such as in sessions, ceremonies and basically anything that's not climbing mountains.

It isn't unknown for some schools in Scotland to have kilt based uniforms and many weddings today not only have the groom in a kilt but all the boys whither playing roles such as page boys or not.

There's no reason why you shouldn't wear one with pride.
 

Role playing

It was oh so simple then.

Boys were do-ers, always active, always in the thick of any activity leading it with authority playing games.

Girls did play games, sometimes they'd play with us but they preferred to play amongst themselves being nurses, teachers even if sometimes they'd wear cowboy outfits or dress pretty.

In 1970 it was straightforward, mirroring more how our parents lived and so they were our role models when it came to what being a boy or a girl was.

It was great being a boy back then.

Getting it together

We played a lot with our toy cars and trucks that some talk about in a more collecting context but for us they were toys to be used so we'd have them lined up with a story for imaginative play with pile ups, delays, even crashes and what not going on.
 

There are actually some websites for boys like us such as this but they tend not to last for very long either because the hosts don't really understand what they and we are all about or some folk seem to forget just why you need rules about what you can post and where.

Cowboys and Indians in the 70's and 80's

One thing looking back at my boyhood was I had and enjoyed playing games that featured cap guns and back then there was less issues around what boys "ought" to playing and around having toy guns on you in the street.

We did play "Cowboys and Indians" splitting into two groups, fighting, trying to capture each other and mock kill them with our cap guns copying the rituals we learned from "Westerns" we saw on tv.

For us it was just a game, we didn't look deeply into historical context or any racial motives where our imaginations ran riot in gardens, local woods or countryside.

I enjoyed playing it even the being captured and tied up cos we knew what was acceptable and when you were being hurtful or otherwise mean and the grown ups we knew also could tell when play was fine to left alone and where they might step in if things were out of hand and we needed chastising.

It was better to let us work with our boyish streaks than to try to make us be more like girls.

I was never a softie for all my disabilities.