Playtime

When I was younger I shared a bedroom with my sister Lizzie for about two years between our brother's birth and our older sister, Rosie, moving out. We fought, though not a lot, for space and used to divide our bedroom in half (mine was always the messy half). The one time we were united was when we played. Most children play with lego, or marble runs or cars... but we used to play a lot more with our soft toys. Each of them had a unique personality, a place that was special in our stories. Of course there were the bad guys, and the creepy ones, and the "it couples" and then there was the leader.

Tanya the turtle, that was her name. I recently stumbled across her in a box of children's toys for Imogen, and actually realised she was always a tortoise, not a turtle. But she was the matriarch in our small society of the "valley" between mine and Lizzie's beds. Her chief advisers were Ragtail (my favourite toy to this day) and Little Spot (Lizzie's). They had their own stories too, their own partners: a crocodile named Croco for Ragtail (despite her being a rabbit) and a platypus called Patty for Little Spot (he was a duck so it wasn't all that bad).

In a discussion with Lizzie about our childhood playtime, we recently discovered just how aware of things like creepy men we were, and how aware we were of possible sexual predators. We were around eight and nine at the time, but our games had been going on before we moved into the room. The sexual predator I am referring to here was a frog named Freddy who had no girlfriend and was always trying to convince others to break up with their own lovers and be with him instead. The way he did it came across as creepy though, I mean if a guy came up to you, all salivating and moaning and asked you to break up with your boyfriend, what would you think?

I wonder, as reflection on my age back then, whether we can ever truly protect the young from learning about this. We're not supposed to talk to strangers, yet our parents want to keep us innocent? Perhaps that's hypocritical...

I wonder also, as someone with a very early sexual activation, whether the sex education in schools is enough early enough. My brother, who is almost thirteen, knows less about sex than I realised. Upon talking with him about it he told me that "proper" sex was when you did it to have babies. I asked him what unprotected sex was, he replied that it was without a "comdom". I guess you could argue that there's truth of some sort in that, but not really enough. In less than a year (if he is put in the same place I was) he could be experiencing it - I hope to god he won't but that may not stop him - and if he is he won't be properly prepared. At my old school, the one he now attends, they don't teach it until year nine, which is far too late. That's after all the pressure is put on, and after all the boys have thrown on their bravado about how much they have had it. I mean, if they're going to do it they need preparation.

Oh well. Playtime, it seems, is burdened with dangers, mostly of ignorance. Is this ignorance brought on by our own parents? Sometimes I wonder...