Local 5th Grader Uncovers Recent History of “Play”
8.13.07


NEWSFLASH -- Usually Onyx Cranium seeks out individuals to interview for our weekly Feature Article.  This time, the subject of our interview contacted us.  Damont Jackenson is an alert and handsome 10-year-old who is at the top of his class at a private elementary school located in Southern California.  To understand where he’s coming from, there are a few things you should know about him.  Despite his family’s obvious pride in their African American heritage, Damont has consistently been the only black child in each of his classes since he was admitted to a prestigious and pricey private pre school in Beverly Hills.    His parents, both accomplished professionals, hold to the typical upper middle class belief that they can best serve the black community by producing a self-assured and extremely accomplished young black male.  They certainly have achieved this in the youngest member of the Jackenson family.  Damont earns an A+ in all his classes, is currently increasing his rank among competitive chess players and will complete his first college class this summer.  In short, the term “Einstein” barely seems to do him justice.  Damont speaks fluent Spanish and is learning French while also dabbling in Italian and German.  (His parents have a tutor exposing him to Swahili at home.)  His mother told us that Damont has never been forced into learning – it comes naturally to him. 

Oddly enough, this 10-year-old does not consider himself a nerd.  He has the latest version of every video game you could think of and is well versed in all gaming systems.  He’s already sent Apple a list of suggested improvements he hopes to see in the next IPhone.  Damont also watches several educational shows and even a little MTV when he uses his Tivo on the weekends (no TV during school days).  All in all, Damont believes he leads an active life for a 10-year-old.  At least that was the case until he did a small research article for his history section and was blown away by what he found.  He searched for someone that would let him share his story, but didn’t find any interest in the mainstream or alternative media.  Then he stumbled on our fledgling site and wondered if him being the first black child we interviewed would be enough to give him some screen space.  Obviously self-marketing is one of his many talents.  Damont sat down with us and didn’t waste any time getting to the point.

OC:  Hello Damont.  It’s a pleasure to interview such an accomplished and very young brother.  Where would you like to go to college? 

DJ:  Can we not do a puff piece?  Your website make you guys seem like you’d be different.

OC: Well aren’t you charmingly direct?  What did you want to talk to us about?

DJ:  Apparently, most people my age used to engage in extreme outdoor activity.  Did you know that?

OC:  Can you clarify what you mean by “extreme” outdoor activity? 

DJ:  Like running around – at full speed and touching other kids their age and then running around again.  And like doing this over and over again for hours on end.  It seems like sheer madness!

OC:  I’m a little thrown by your reaction, but I believe you’re talking about a game called tag or freeze tag.

DJ:  Oh, my God!  You’ve heard of it.  Were you alive when that was played?

Now here we pause.  I can tell this little boy is serious, but I’m not quite “there” with him yet.

OC:  Kids still play tag.

DJ:  Where?  I’d never even heard of it until I did my report.  My goodness – that report!  It changed my life.

OC:  Why don’t you elaborate Damont?

DJ:  Well, to be brief, the professor that instructs my history section required a five-page report on recent cultural history.  We could choose any topic that we wanted and so I chose “play.”  Now, I understand there is a whole philosophical theory entitled play, but that wasn’t what I was after.  I’m only 10 you know and while most of my classmates act like they’re already in college, I still like to do things that others my age do.

He pauses, not sure if I believe him.  My assumption is that he’s said the last sentence quite a few times.  Maybe to the other African American kids he happened to stumble across at a Jack & Jill gatherings.  I remain quiet, encouraging him to continue.

DJ:  So, I was going to focus on video games and do a brief comparison of what 10-year-olds prefer in terms of gaming systems.  I figured it’d be something really easy to write and it was.  I finished the paper based on internal reports from Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and even Apple.

OC:  So where does freeze tag come into all this?

DJ:  Well, I was editing the paper and decided to double-check a footnote.  I don’t really remember, but for some reason I ended up googling the word play and all this stuff popped up.  Somehow I found my way into a chat room entitled “30 Playas Only.”  I thought it was an online competition limited to 30 competitors and I wanted to sign up since I beat adults online all the time.  Well, turns out it was a chatroom for people who were in their 30s.  At first they were talking about pretty boring stuff – relationships, sex, their careers – things that almost put me to sleep.  Then some person named OldSchool38 compared an argument with his wife to playing “tag”.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  I just would have assumed it was a gaming reference, but then he mentioned running around and grass and something about streetlights.  I remember being confused and thinking what in the world do streetlights have to do with running around?

OC:  I guess he was talking about playing until the streetlights came on.

Damont nearly jumped out of his chair.

DJ:  Yeah!  That’s exactly what he was talking about, only at the time I couldn’t decipher his exact meaning.  Anyway, I left the chatroom and started doing some research.  Not only did I find out what tag was, apparently kids my age used to spend a good deal of their free time literally running around. 

OC:  Now Damont, I hate to interrupt you, but do you mean to tell me that your school doesn’t have physical education?  I saw some very impressive apparatuses in the rear corner of the school’s back lot.

DJ:  Those are mostly science projects.  They like to keep them because we usually win national awards for them.

OC:  Oh.

DJ:  As for physical education, we do have allotted time to meet the suggested requirements by the Department of Health, but I’m not talking about class.  That’s required by law.  What blew me away was that during time when they could have been on the internet or watching television or playing video games, kids were actually outside running around and making up games in their heads.  Actually making up their own rules as they went along! Tag was just the tip of the iceberg.  There was something called Yellow Light/Green Light.

OC:  You mean Red Light/Green Light.

DJ:  That’s it!  Sheer lunacy!  From what I gathered children were entertained by simply starting to move and then stopping.  And they did this for hours!

OC:  Well, the fun part of Red Light/Green Light is getting caught and having to start over.

Damont looks at me like I have a screw that is ever so slightly loose.  I’d revealed my age in my clear enthusiasm for a game I hadn’t played in decades.

DJ:  Yeah, that’s what some of the people who talked about it said.  But there were other games too.  A lot of them sounded completely fictional, as if they were just made upon the spot.  Another big one was Hide and Seek, which was about as literal a title as I saw.

He’s shaking his head.  He appears unimpressed, yet intrigued.

DJ:  I mean, in these games, people didn’t advance to another level.  Even if there was some sort of winner left, it didn’t mean anything.  No records were kept.  They just started playing again.  I mean, what was the point of exerting yourself like that into the early evening?

I want to laugh, but this is rather sad.  Damont’s chocolately cherubic face is that of a child and he definitely has had a childhood, but it’s been spent largely in front of a screen (like the one you’re reading now).

OC:  Well, we didn’t look at it as such a waste of time.  It was fun, enjoyable.  I could have sworn I saw a handball court on one of your school’s anchor.

DJ:  Sure, there’s a handball court and racquetball and tennis and basketball too.  But that’s mostly used by the male faculty and I wasn’t talking about sports.  What I can’t fully understand is that after playing some of these same games at school, kids would go home and play more.  I even think one guy in his late 20s or early 30s said something about having to finish his homework so he could go outside of the house and run around.

OC:  Well, sure.  My Mom had that rule too.  Had to finish your homework before you could go out and play.  Your parents don’t have that rule?

Damont is a bit insulted.

DJ:  I don’t need a rule to complete my work.  But even if I did, my parents wouldn’t reward me with being unleashed into the streets.

Now I know that Damont lives in Brentwood, but he’s just making a point.  And even though his impressive vocabulary and well-timed diction make it seem otherwise, he is only 10.

DJ:  But how could being put outside with nothing to do be a reward?

OC:  I’ll try to help you understand.  We didn’t look at is as “nothing to do”.  Going outside was something to do.  You know, like going to the park.

DJ:  You mean like for a field trip?

OC:  No, like going to the park just to go to the park.

DJ:  I don’t understand what you’re saying.  What do you do without something to listen to or a real game to play?

OC:  For us, made up games were real games.  They were interacting and having a good time exhausting yourself with your friends or your neighbors.  Surely you have friends Damont. Don’t you guys spend the night over each other’s houses?

DJ:  Well, I have friends and we do that, but we usually spend the time actually doing something – like having a video tournament or watching movies.

OC:  But playing in the back or front yard is doing something.  It’s having fun.

Damont is quiet once again.  He wants to believe me, but he can’t quite wrap his head around what I’m saying.  He’s is indeed a very modern child and I suppose imagining such rudimentary games as Red Light/Green Light or tag are like me trying to imagine playing Jacks for hours.  I look at him and realize that he doesn’t even know what jacks are.  I suddenly feel very, very old and move to conclude the interview.  But Damont asks his question before I can get anything out.

DJ:  Didn’t you guys have video games?

OC:  Some people did – like Atari.  I remember when Nintendo and Sega first hit the market.  But not everybody had them. 

DJ:  But for those that did, didn’t they prefer to play video games.

Now he’s interviewing me.

OC:  Well, sometimes.  But we were teenagers by then and were getting out of playing games, though we still had all block water fights and the guys played football when cars were driving down the street.

Damont slowly shakes his head.

DJ:  Our neighborhood association would never allow that.

Ah, I think, the price of privilege.

OC:  You know, Damont.  Plenty of kids still play those games.  Kids are still out running around for the hell of it.

DJ:  Where?

How sad.

OC:  Everywhere.  Maybe not in your neighborhood or on your block, but it’s still going on.  Kids will always be kids.

Damont now looks like he wants to end the interview, even if it is on a dissatisfactory note.

DJ:  Well, thanks for letting me share my research.  I thought it was really interesting, the whole purposeless action as entertainment.

OC:  Oh, Damont.  You make it sound so technical.

DJ:  Well, that’s how it sounds to me.

We part ways and I think about our little exchange – how insignificant it is.  Perhaps the editors won’t run it.  It may not even qualify as a human-interest story.  Later on that night I give my 35 year-old cousin a call at 7:00pm.  I ask her what she’s doing.  Washing dishes, she tells me.  Then I ask what the kids are doing and her answer is a bit rattling considering my earlier exchange.  Damien (17) is out with friends at the movies.  Shondra (13) is talking on the phone.  What are the little ones doing?  That’s what I really wanted to know.  Malaki (10) is on the internet and Evan (7) is playing a video game since he finished his homework early.  I hold out for the last one (I know, she has a lot of ‘em).  Evelyn (4) is with Evan and learning the controls.  It’s really cute, I’m told.  And I’m sure it is.  Don’t they ever go outside and just play I ask her.  Sometimes, she tells me but they have plenty of stuff to do in the house.  There’s really nothing for them to do outside she says.  Nothing for a bunch of kids under the age of 11 to do outside?  If she’s thinking that, I guess they are too. 

I realize for the second time that day, that I’m a dinosaur.  But I’m not crazy.  It was fun – running around for hours on end, occasionally looking at the sky and hoping that the streetlight wouldn’t go on.  Because when it did, it was time to go inside – where, at least I thought at the time, there was nothing to do.