Honey we shrunk their childhood

- August 09, 2013

This seems to be the common lament of almost every adult today, but particularly so of parents, who are at a loss to understand what is happening around them. Where and when did the most prized and cherished part of life, suddenly vanish?

Once upon a time there were people who wanted this to be the most prolonged part, almost akin to an extended sojourn, in a journey, as it encompassed the best of everything: innocence, carefreeness and most of all wonderment.

This sadly is not the case anymore. Of course in the days gone by there was the urge to reach that line, the forbidden line and hasten the process of crossing over into adulthood, but when childhood beckoned one reckoned it was far more interesting to turn back just that one last time!

Now far from the lines being distinct, they are almost unrecognizable, sharply blurred and/or fast vanishing. There is an indescribable hurry to reach the former finishing line. Earlier there was the much awaited, bated breath kind of excitement accompanied by a certain amount of fanfare, almost akin to a rite of passage.

The ones who are wondering how it happened, are actually the defaulters. Just as no one really can be individually blamed for creating a polluted, tangled almost mangled Earth, it being a collective reckless onus that humankind is trying to get rid of, the fact remains that if at least one of these creatures or just a few of them had behaved in a more responsible manner we wouldn’t be hurtling toward disaster.

There is no problem in being adult, but there is a problem sometimes in being adulterous. These very adults who were showered by adulation and love as children and were kept ensconced in a fairy tale world, a world of innocence, as a deliberate measure, are the ones who suddenly turned away and let the innocent kids get caught in a fast enveloping, drowning whirlpool. A quicksand of sorts and now any endeavor to extricate themselves or the ones in it causes them to sink in deeper.

So how did it begin and when did it take such huge proportions and become a malaise? There isn’t any one moment in time that would historically record the rolling out of this germ but it is actually a series of mishaps that has led up to it.

For starters, the kids today are exposed to things way beyond their understanding at a very tender age and it isn’t a one off situation, they are constantly bombarded by images of and from the adult world that can create in them an urge to speed up their mental and physical processes or processing! They have access like never before to a world that opens up reams, and realms in graphic detail at the touch of a button.

Their only occupation is being immersed in technology; not for them is the wonderment of staring into the firmament, not for them an engaging session of scrabble in real time. Theirs is a world peopled by fantasy beings, but not ones indulging in harmless activities.

It all began in an adult laboratory where the adults decided to conduct an experiment, the modus operandi revolved around making their progeny as different from themselves as possible. And lo and behold, soon enough it happened. The experimenters decided to remove all conventional parameters and inputs and let the kids, here the experimental material develop in any which way.

To begin with the adults were thrilled with their experiment, of having produced beings, who were very different from them. Then the reality began to hit them in their face, when they realized much like the Frankenstein issue, this experiment had proverbially boomeranged.

There were at the end of the experiment, what appeared to be children or kids as they were meant to be, till about nine years of age and then there was a void for at age ten they were eighteen or more. Strangely too, not only was it to do with what they did or did not do, but also with the way they looked.

The couple turned to each other for answers and almost chorused in exasperation, ‘Honey, think we have shrunk their childhood?