Childhood of books and little adventures

Thank you very much Hyacinth Tagupa for your nice and true words of wisdom in “Where the wild kids are” (1/12/18).

Yes, I remember my own time. I was born in 1967 and will be 51 next month. As I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, I was a “book nerd.” Instead of going outdoors most of the time, I was reading books including those that were far ahead of the development of my brain like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Yukio Mishima, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx or Seneca.

The good thing was, I was ahead of all my classmates from high school to doctorate in university. The surely bad thing was, I was quite isolated and had problems with my social skills so I developed social phobia and tried to miss all kinds of parties, weddings and so on.

I was already a teenager when I discovered outdoor activities. Yes, I began to climb trees; sometimes I had little accidents, but never mind, you learn from your mistakes not from your success.

My greatest discovery was all kinds of sport activities in snow. I love ice hockey and I wasn’t bad at it. But I also know I missed a lot of things while I was a kid like experience and little adventures with friends, and it’s time I will not get back.

You see during those times, there weren’t gadgets or internet at all, but I was addicted to indoor activities like reading books.

Today, a lot of kids also have indoor activities but still play outside though maybe less. But it’s still different to touch a fantasy world and live in a bubble, or to play with real friends outside and touch and experience the real tree of life.

JÜRGEN SCHÖFER, PhD,
Biopreparat.Schoefer
@gmail.com