Imagination

So I've been reading Eragon and I just have to say... I love it! It almost reminds me of The Lord of the Rings but it's definitely different. I won't talk about the book because I wouldn't want to ruin the story but it did make me realize something. I wish dragons existed because now I want one, lol. Just like when I saw one of the Star Wars movies as a kid and I wanted an ewok and with Gremlins I wanted a mogwai (except, you know, I'd follow all the rules so that I wouldn't have a bunch of gremlins running around).

I sometimes wonder if kids today have the same type of imagination that I remember having as a kid. I'm not around children much so that's why I don't know. But I remember my childhood being so magical and full of discovery, imagination, and experimentation. I was a total 80's kid and is it just me or were there more movies that played to the imagination? Like Legend, Gremlins, The Neverending Story, E.T., Teen Wolf, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Beetlejuice, Elvira, Little Monsters, Willow, Short Circuit, Masters of the Universe, Labyrinth, Once Bitten, Princess Bride, Spaceballs, Splash, Big Trouble in Little China, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Weird Science, Conan the Barbarian, Earth Girls Are Easy, The Goonies, Ghoulies, The Gate, Child's Play, Return of the Living Dead, The Fly, Nightmare on Elm St, Lost Boys, Robocop, etc. I won't lie, I had to look up some of these cuz I couldn't remember their titles, and I added more than I thought I would but I just kept remembering more as I looked more up. My point is that these weren't cartoons or movies about "real" life, they were about fantasy, imagination, or adventure. I can't think of many movies like that nowadays. Maybe there are and I'm just not aware of them. Either that or maybe I think that they couldn't be as good as the ones I saw as a kid because of the nostalgia factor.

Anyways, about kids today, I'm going off on tangents. I didn't grow up with tons of toys and video games. I made planes out of boxes, put wooden planks on top of bricks and played Olympics gymnastics, made dolls out of flour and water (they always fell apart), made caves out of couch cushions, and climbed trees. I played school, market, and street (pretended we were strangers walking down a sidewalk who would stop and greet each other) with my siblings, played tremors (like the movie), sardines, freeze tag, hide & seek, and red light green light. We were that family with a broke down car in our backyard and we'd play monsters on it. We'd watch our favorite shows and act them out again with each other. Granted, my childhood wasn't perfect. We didn't always have alot of money and my parents fought alot. But I remember having alot of fun as a kid, losing myself in games, movies, and make believe.

Do kids still play like that? Or is it just sports, TV, the internet, and computer and video games? Kinda sad....