Remember when you thought counting to 30 really, really , really fast was only way to measure 30 seconds?

There are about 5 children in my building. Actually, that is totally incorrect. I honestly have no idea how many children there are in my building. I think a few live on the first floor and I know a few live next door. There are about 5 that regularly play in the stairwell and right now I can see about 11 playing hide and go seek and other games outside my window.

I love it. I love hearing children outside, I love seeing the games they make up, I love the way creative ways they find to circumvent boredom and the heat. Seeing the way the run around the small gravel area outside my building reminds me of what is was like growing up in the city. City kids don't have nicely trimmed soccer fields (or they certainly didn't when I grew up in NYC), lush lawns or cute cul-de-sacs to ride their bikes on. When they are pushed out side to play, by their parents or smallness of their apartments there is no tree to climb or perfectly assembled jungle gym. They have buildings, roads, gravel, dirt, stores, parked cars and a few neglected areas that a perfect for hide a go seek. It is in this dusty hard landscape that the children of my building area scream with joy and play for hours. It was on a similar landscape, albeit with a tiny bit of grass that I also learned to play outside and make up games with my siblings and neighbors.

I remember talking to a American-Indian girl 5 years ago when I was flying back from India. She was a graduate student studying policy or development and had been in India observing, writing and researching. She told me about the impression left on her from watching children in a third world country play. On and on she went about how happy she was to see children in her country playing with that they had- a stick, a deflated ball, their feet. It didn't really matter, they figured it out. They play with things American children easily scorn and take for granted. She recalled how poverty did not stop these children and how she would never see allow her children to have more then the simplest of toys (much easier said then done).

I also remember a conversation I had while teaching at a Grade 5-8 charter school in Newark. I was standing outside during recess, watching a bunch of well-developed adult looking 8th grader girls jumprope, debating whether I should join them. This girls, who knew absolutely everything- and I do mean everything- suddenly metamorphize into children, 12 year old chidren. As I stood there, one of the teachers said to me- don't you love watching children recreate? The question, so simple, was so insightful. Yes, I do. I love watching children recreate because watching children recreate tells so much about a culture and about the children.

Yes, my 8th grades, one of whom had a child at 12, turned into girls when they played. But equally important was the fact that the only object that turned them into girls was a simple jump rope. Just as the build landscape of buildings and gravel allow my neighborhood children in Albania to play and the deflated ball in India enabled those children to play. I've never been to Africa, but I'm guessing the children there play and with toys that cost less that $2.00

So, as I look at my window at the children who are still play hide-and-go seek, one hour after I have started writing I am reminded so clearly of why I left America. Fancy plastic toys, expensive bikes and video games don't really make childhood. Children get bored on their fancy plastic toys so fast. They master the video game and need another one. And, no mater what, as long as it has brakes and 2 wheels a bike is really just a bike. I have now watched these children, aged 7-12 play with literally nothing for longer that I have watched many American children play with their barbies, radio cars, and action figures.

Why is it that we continue to believe that children are deprived or neglected in they don't have buckets of toys? When will American's realize that all kids really need are a few other kids and some space to literally run around?