Junkyard Sports Intergenerational

According to AARP, I've been a Senior Citizen long enough to believe it. Which might explain my increasing fascination with the connection between being as old as I am, and my going around teaching the world how to play Junkyard Sports.

I wrote the following message explaining that connection for those of my age group who might be still curious:

As seniors, one of the most valued gifts that we have to offer the world is our laughter and playfulness. It is the gift upon which most human growth and happiness is founded and grandparenthood is built.

Sadly, too few know how deep our playfulness can be, and how lingering our laughter.

Junkyard Sports brings playfulness back into play – no matter with what or whom we’re playing. It is based on a way we played when we were children, in cities, on streets and sandlots, unsupervised, left to our own devices. We invented stickball and stoopball and hundreds of games we never even named. We played with what and whomever we could find, wherever we were. We didn’t need official equipment. We didn’t need $150 shoes or $300 T-shirts. We didn’t have bats, so we played with broomsticks. We didn’t have gloves so we played with a rubber ball. And the sewer lid was home plate.

This is a way of playing that most children of this generation have not experienced. For most of them, play has been co-opted by supervised sport, and sport co-opted by media and commercialization. For most of them, games and sports are less about fun than about proving their self-worth. And in sports, only one-in-a-million succeeds.

Of our many gifts to them, this gift, this increasingly rare spirit of playfulness, of play and invention and making do, of sports for the fun of it, can prove as empowering as it is healing.

So let's see what we can do to help make sports fun again - for all ages and abilities, wherever there are people who want to play; let's foster innovative sports-based programs and events that emphasize fun, creativity, adaptability and inclusiveness.

Playing Junkyard Sports with people of different ages and different skills invariably leads to a sport that can also be played by cross-age and cross-ability groups. What this means for us seniors is that we get to play, too.