Okay, I can't show you my ass here. So I woke Shoes up and asked him to reiterate. He did, glady.

He said, "I remember women having an hourglass shape."

I reminded him or corsets.

He said, "I remember when kids knew how to run like the wind. I remember when kids got home from school and still had to DO something to get all the sugar out of them."

I remembered that feeling myself.

He said, "Imagine no Nintendo. No X-Box or Wii too....no place to go but outside...yeah, in the sunshine too."

I immediately picked up on the John Lennon reference, and I just let it go.

'Cuz he wear no flat-top, he come groovin' up slowly, and he made a lot of sense.

What year were you born in, Evainne?

And have you ever rolled down a hill, with a yell of free abandon, that sounded somewhat like, "WHEEEEEE!!!!"?

So many parents work from home now, on their computers. They do this for many reasons - mostly economic, but many family minded as well. Their greatest wish is more time with their family. Maybe an extra dollar or two for a movie matinee on a Sunday afternoon. Does that happen? Seldom, if ever.

They work more and more, consumed by the draw of "just a few more minutes" on the keyboard, staring at a screen that means their paycheck. Like most bloggers, game players, etc. can understand, those "few more minutes" can become hours.

Parents need to ween not just their children away from screens, but themselves. It is much harder for the grown-ups. We need to make the money to suppliment our lives, and those of the children we hold dear. Many of us do that by staring at a screen.

Children still know how to play. How to dream just by laying on the grass and trying to figure out cloud designs. How to chase each other around and laugh 'til they hurt. How to be kids.

Sometimes, it is the grown-ups who forget. Sometimes we just need to lose a hundred dollars in "pay" to see our children smile. To hear them giggle. To feel their hug.

What's the phrase? Priceless.

Hiking! I'd rather blog..................

People, click the rec. button!

Funny post, Lis.

I grew up in Oregon. Lots of running around in the sun, rain, snow (when we got it). I also canoed and hiked everywhere. Rode horses, roller bladed, snow boarded in Idaho and Utah. One winter even taught skiing at Steamboat Springs, CO. Hiked about Washington and Arizona a lot too. My dad's home was in Sedona. I love the outdoors. I still hike about a lot.

Lis, nice post. I like the whole stream of conscious thing.

It reminds me of this song that I love, the link to which I will post despite the fact that it will reveal my occasionally extremely cheesy taste in music. :)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3AlrFOBmdVI

Distraction: I played the "Ladies First" girl in a school play circa 1976! I wore a lavender dress and patent leather shoes and let my mother put my hair in those hated curlers to make it all bouncy with silken curls. I stood on that stage and shouted out "Ladies First" with gusto, which was surprising even to me because I was exceedingly shy and quiet at that age. I was a hit!

On another note, it's not just the Nintendo that's making our kids fat. It's the nature of the food. When we were growing up in the '60s and '70s, there wasn't that much processed food. Most of what we ate was real food with actual nutrients. Trips to McDonalds were a rare treat, not a twice-weekly or more ritual. Soft drinks were also a treat, not an aggressively-marketed daily staple found even in schools. Sugary cereals and snacks were not marketed as aggressively (and in my house, they were verboten).

Much of what is marketed today as food would be unrecognizable to our grand-parents. Time pressures and money pressures encourage parents to go for convenience foods, which are laden with calories, fats and chemicals, which we don't metabolize as well. Whole foods - actual fruits, vegetables, healthy meats, etc. - tend to be relatively expensive and, in inner cities, are sometimes harder to find.

Hmmm... I seemed to have rambled on a bit. Anyway, my point is that we need to look at our food supply and at our agricultural policies because they're not serving us well. They've created a system where calories are very cheap and nutrition is expensive.

Stream of consciousness.... Very good!

A word from "follow the (corrupt) money":

The reason for the gradual increase in body weight in the U.S. is a steady increase in the consumption of carbohydrates, mainly sugar. Coca Cola and Pepsi succeeded (in the 60s and 70s) in replacing milk, iced tea and the like, as America's favored drinks, with sugar sodas. Battle Creek succeeded in replacing our breakfasts of the past with sugared cereal. Fast food companies put perfumes and artificial flavors in their food to make us eat much more of it than we need to satisfy our hunger.

Corporate America is exploiting our taste buds and our sense of smell to make a bundle of cash.

Overweight individuals find exercise difficult. No matter what your weight, imaging wearing a 40 pound pack on your back all day long: you would tend to sit in a chair more than you do now, and exercise less than you do now. It is a descending spiral: weight gain leads to more effort required to move around leads to less exercise leads to weight gain.

So don't blame yourselves - we have all been manipulated. It takes will power to fight off the corporation created temptations, to stop kindly increasing their profits. It takes will power to get off the sofa, and get out to exercise. Although really, it isn't complicated. All it takes to exercise is go to the front door, open it, step out, close it behind you, and walk for 15 minutes, then come home. That's a 30 minute walk. But first you have to go to the front door.