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Savor the joy of a
picnic Culture is preserved by parents who pass commonly-held customs along to their children. For generations, one such preserving custom was the picnic. When my wife and I were kids, the picnic was a fairly regular good-weather ritual for our respective families. These mini-vacations were usually located far outside the city limits, in a state park or even just at one of the many roadside picnic tables (with charcoal grill and sometimes even a horseshoe pit) that used to dot the American landscape. As parents, we passed the joys of picnicking on to our kids. I’m now aware that this cultural preservative is in danger of going the way of the drive-in theater, another old-fashioned thing families once got excited about, especially when Dad and Mom hid the kids in the trunk so they wouldn’t have to pay as much to get in. For those of you who are too young to know what a picnic is, or was, here’s a brief synopsis: The parents pack a lunch of yummy albeit unhealthy stuff like fried chicken and potato salad and really salty pickles and various canned carbonated chemicals, and then everyone gets in the car and travels to a shady spot in the country, away from the hustle and bustle of city life. When a suitable spot is found, a tablecloth is laid out on the ground or spread over a public picnic table, the food is placed upon it, and everyone eats while commenting on the beauty of nature. Before and after the meal, family members take walks, throw Frisbees, play guitars and sing, or maybe just lie back on a blanket and sleep and get a sunburned face. It wasn’t exciting, no, and that was the very idea behind a picnic. It was an opportunity for the family to tone down their daily lives, get away from it all, and just relax and enjoy one another’s company. Unfortunately, in these hurry-up-we-gotta-go times, organized after-school and weekend activities like soccer have replaced relaxing activities like the family picnic. That’s too bad, because watching a child play a sport and yelling your head off while he does is not a family activity, nor is it especially relaxing. Yelling and relaxed do not compute.
Picnics are more fun than the movies even because at the movies you have to be quiet, and if you go to the bathroom, you miss something. And at the movies, a soda and a small box of popcorn costs the average American a half a week’s wages. At a picnic, a soda costs what you can buy it for at your local discount grocery store, and it tastes even better, because everything tastes better when it’s consumed in the open air. Another advantage of picnics over going to the movies: You can’t get fried chicken at the movies. Hey, listen people! Do something daring this weekend! Shock your friends and neighbors! Go on a picnic! One warning: Picnics are addictive. Once they find out what picnics are all about, kids would rather picnic than play organized soccer. Who could blame them? At picnics, adults don’t stand around yelling their heads off. |
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