Psychologists tell us that by age four, children are very good at differentiating playing from fighting. But, what about those events that fall in the middle, play-fighting and rough-and-tumble play? Can fighting be playful?
Here we have an instinctive sense of the answer to the question—one that most of us boys honed by experience. We know the difference. The culture informally discouraged fisticuffs (but not verbal rough-and-tumble) for girls of course. And legal strictures discouraged it, too. For most of the 20th […]
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Droopy the Crow, the Surprising Bird Brain, and Play
I gave Droopy his name when he first appeared outside my office window at the National Institute for Play headquarters nearly ten years ago. He’s old for a wild crow. An injured wing made him easy to pick out as a youngster but has not seemed to hinder him since. He’s raised a brood each year with a crow version of aggressive mentoring and attentive tough love. Crows brood cooperatively and for long periods, and so crow young get plenty […]
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Skill, Risk, Play, and the Daredevils of Niagara
To stand at the brink of Niagara Falls—sun shining through the transparent water, the mist rising, the roar underneath, a rainbow overhead—is to experience a beauty so humbling that philosophers and painters describe this dizzying, unsettling moment as “the sublime.” While viewing the Falls, not many can suppress the overpowering thought of how the rushing current would easily sweep them away. Over the years not a few have tested this notion, but only a few have survived. Some have plunged […]
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Ray Bradbury, 1920-∞: At Play in Space and Time
While in Seattle for a conference a couple of years ago, I ditched the scheduled luncheon and scooted over to the EMP Museum, a flashy, entertaining, interactive museum devoted to music, popular culture, and science fiction. When I went down to the basement annex, I found the Science Fiction Hall of Fame packed, wall-to-wall, with deeply absorbed science-fiction fans, some in alien makeup or mocked-up space suits. I never counted myself as one of these fans. Until that is, while […]
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One Question for Lance Armstrong
The French have a saying: les pensées d’escalier, “thoughts on the stairs,” or in America, we say, “what I shoudda said.” Usually the perfect comeback doesn’t come to you until you’re leaving the event—in your overcoat on the stairwell—and it can do you no good. The witty riposte that surfaces fills you with regret. Alas, I had one of these experiences recently at a meet and greet for Lance Armstrong. He was scheduled to speak at the Ride for Roswell, […]
Albert Paley: Gravity, Sculpture, and Play
Less than a minute into my scheduled interview with world-renowned sculptor Albert Paley, we knew we had a problem. I wanted to talk about how he played as a child, but Paley wanted to know what I meant by play. And just like that he became the interviewer and I was the one reaching for answers. It’s a great question. I gave the answer most people interested in play can agree with: play is self-initiated, self-regulated, and self-limited. Play has […]
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To Gender or Not to Gender, That’s the Question
I’m a bit of a mossback when it comes to language. Specialized usages and jargon set my teeth on edge. So when I overheard the rent-a-cop at the county fair lean into his walkie-talkie with “what’s your six?” when “where are you?” would do perfectly well, I started to grind molar enamel. But of course to close one’s mind to innovation of this sort walls one off to the creativity of the evolving language. And because we Americans give ourselves […]
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Playing with Your Head: What do You Do When Red Looks Blue?
Did you know that it’s rumored that a simple game helped counterintelligence agents discover Russian Spies? For decades, this classic psychology experiment based in a simple, funny, yet devilish game continues to demonstrate how play reveals the inner working of our minds.
Try this. Read the following set of words out loud:
Red Blue Yellow Green Purple
Piece of cake, right? Now, (and here’s the brain-teaser) say out loud the color of the text in each word:
Red Blue Yellow Green Purple
Um, er, […]
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Playing with Words: Word Ranger
During one of my recent late night channel-surfing interludes, I came to rest on the classic film Northwest Passage (1940). Spencer Tracy stars in the role of Major Rogers, dashing leader of the ragtag Rogers Rangers, a militia that patrolled the Lake Champlain region in the French and Indian War as it is still known here in our post-colonial outpost. I joined the film part way through and stayed with it. My ear caught several instances of frontiersmen using the […]