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Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing.
"A classic evocation of childhood . . . a masterly mixture of up-country drawl and Huckleberry Finn."—The New Yorker
A hugely popular bestseller when it first appeared in 1957, Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. is Robert Paul Smith's nostalgic and often wry look back on his 1920s childhood. Smith agitates against what he perceives as the over-scheduled and over-supervised lives of suburban children as he celebrates privacy, boredom, and time to oneself away from adults. Arcane games and pastimes including mumbly-peg, horse-chestnut collecting, and Indian scalp burns pervade the book, alongside tales of young love—"I loved the smell of kerosene. Rose smelled of kerosene. I loved Rose."—and hard-won observations by Smith the elder. Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. still conveys the essence of adventure that forms the basis of a fondly recalled childhood. 7 black-and-white illustrations
A hugely popular bestseller when it first appeared in 1957, Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. is Robert Paul Smith's nostalgic and often wry look back on his 1920s childhood. Smith agitates against what he perceives as the over-scheduled and over-supervised lives of suburban children as he celebrates privacy, boredom, and time to oneself away from adults. Arcane games and pastimes including mumbly-peg, horse-chestnut collecting, and Indian scalp burns pervade the book, alongside tales of young love—"I loved the smell of kerosene. Rose smelled of kerosene. I loved Rose."—and hard-won observations by Smith the elder. Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. still conveys the essence of adventure that forms the basis of a fondly recalled childhood. 7 black-and-white illustrations
- GenresHumorFictionYoung Adult
134 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
9 people are currently reading
299 people want to read
About the author
Robert Paul Smith
34 books10 followersAuthored the classic evocation of childhood: 'Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing.'
Graduated from Columbia College in 1936, worked as a writer for CBS Radio and wrote four novels: So It Doesn't Whistle (1946); The Journey, (1943); Because of My Love (1946); The Time and the Place (1951).
The classic "battle-of-the-sexes" comedy 'The Tender Trap', a play by Smith and Dobie Gillis creator Max Shulman, opened in 1954 with Robert Preston in the leading role. It was later made into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds.
'Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing' is a nostalgic evocation of the inner life of childhood. It advocates the value to children of privacy; the importance of unstructured time; the joys of boredom; and the virtues of freedom from adult supervision. He opens by saying "The thing is, I don't understand what kids do with themselves any more." He contrasts the overstructured, overscheduled, oversupervised suburban life of the child in the suburban 1950's with reminiscences of his own childhood. He concludes "I guess what I am saying is that people who don't have nightmares don't have dreams. If you will excuse me, I have an appointment with myself to sit on the front steps and watch some grass growing."
Graduated from Columbia College in 1936, worked as a writer for CBS Radio and wrote four novels: So It Doesn't Whistle (1946); The Journey, (1943); Because of My Love (1946); The Time and the Place (1951).
The classic "battle-of-the-sexes" comedy 'The Tender Trap', a play by Smith and Dobie Gillis creator Max Shulman, opened in 1954 with Robert Preston in the leading role. It was later made into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds.
'Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing' is a nostalgic evocation of the inner life of childhood. It advocates the value to children of privacy; the importance of unstructured time; the joys of boredom; and the virtues of freedom from adult supervision. He opens by saying "The thing is, I don't understand what kids do with themselves any more." He contrasts the overstructured, overscheduled, oversupervised suburban life of the child in the suburban 1950's with reminiscences of his own childhood. He concludes "I guess what I am saying is that people who don't have nightmares don't have dreams. If you will excuse me, I have an appointment with myself to sit on the front steps and watch some grass growing."
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December 11, 2020
I saw this book in 1957 in my home town library. I never thought to read it, because, well, I thought it was a book about bad kids, how they committed crimes and when asked what they were doing, it was always, “Nothing.” Then a few months ago I saw this at our library in the used book sale. I bought it because it reminded me of when I lived in Paso Robles, CA in my youth. Well, there is a chapter where kids are committing crimes and not telling their parents. The crime: a group of kids want to built a hut and a tree house, so they go sneak wood, nails, etc. from a construction site. And now and then they take their parents money that is lying around, or a cigarette, or candy.
This book was wonderful. I think of getting copies for our book group. What nostalgia.
The author thinks that kids now-a-days didn’t have the fun that he had as a child, and sometimes he says, he was even bored. He grew up in the 1920s when kids wore knickerbockers that had big pockets. You could fill them up with almost anything, even horse chestnuts, stripping the trees. I did almost everything he did when I grew up in the 40s, 50s and 60s. But now I would say, what do kids grow up doing? It is just that they always have an IPad or other computer game? I never see kids playing in the neighborhoods anymore. When I was a kid we had the run of Paso Robles, the hills, the river and downtown and its stores.
I put a lot of tabs in the book, and then when he mentioned the books he read, like The Rover Boys, Tom Sawyer and many others, I got on my kindle and ordered the books for 99 cents. I bought Mega-Pacs, and Amazon kept tempting me with other cheap out-of-date books.
“How about a game of ‘mumbly-peg?’” He asked some grown kids. They never heard of it. I had to look it up, and it has rules. It consists of having a pocket knife, and a kid has to stand with his feet shoulder length apart. Another kid will toss the knife, getting the knife as close to the kid’s foot as possible, sticking the knife in the ground. Another kid will try to get it closer. The closest one wins. What? I remember only tossing my pocket knife to get it to stick into the ground. No other kids involved. Then there was “Rover, Rover.” And even my husband and I remember the name, how it sounded when you called it out. I had to look it up, and I suppose we played that game at school. But I was never really into games, not even sports except for tether ball. I was good at tether ball.
“There were the long evenings and you can hear what the neighbors are saying, and the other night we went out in the back yard to lie on our backs on a blanket and watch the meteor showers.” Yes. As a kid we even took our sleeping bags outside and slept in them. Such simple things that bring pleasure, and later in life, bring back memories. He believes that then, back in 1957, kids were at camp because “What are kids going to do with themselves all summer?” "It might be nice,” he said, "if they dug themselves a hole or spent the day kicking a can." I don’t know about all day, but I have kicked cans to the grocery store. Then he says that they could fill the hole with water, for no other reason than the fact that they could.
Then kids would mix up things in water and dare other kids to drink it, telling them that it tasted good. I know that one. My brother once put Pepto Bismo in a glass of water and talked our neighbor, Kenny Gibbs, into drinking it, telling him that it was Kool-Aid. He also put salt in a sugar bowl and got me to taste it, saying it was sugar, and proving it by taking a small teaspoon himself. His bite was sugar. I gagged on mine. He once told me that dirt tasted good, so I tried it. The author talked about how some kids would eat dirt for a penny.
Kids played marbles. Do they still? I played marbles and Jacks. When it rained kids played in mud puddles, they put sticks in water to watch them float away. We skipped stones on the river, and most of all there was no structure in our life, just be home by dinner time. We just did what they felt like doing at the time, and sometimes I was bored too.
Back then kids would water the lawn with a hose by spraying it back and forth and in arcs, “washing the walk, and the porch and the window screen and your father in the living room reading the paper.”
He, now a father, ended the book with these words, “If you will excuse me, I have an appointment with myself to sit on the front steps and watch some grass grow.”
This book was wonderful. I think of getting copies for our book group. What nostalgia.
The author thinks that kids now-a-days didn’t have the fun that he had as a child, and sometimes he says, he was even bored. He grew up in the 1920s when kids wore knickerbockers that had big pockets. You could fill them up with almost anything, even horse chestnuts, stripping the trees. I did almost everything he did when I grew up in the 40s, 50s and 60s. But now I would say, what do kids grow up doing? It is just that they always have an IPad or other computer game? I never see kids playing in the neighborhoods anymore. When I was a kid we had the run of Paso Robles, the hills, the river and downtown and its stores.
I put a lot of tabs in the book, and then when he mentioned the books he read, like The Rover Boys, Tom Sawyer and many others, I got on my kindle and ordered the books for 99 cents. I bought Mega-Pacs, and Amazon kept tempting me with other cheap out-of-date books.
“How about a game of ‘mumbly-peg?’” He asked some grown kids. They never heard of it. I had to look it up, and it has rules. It consists of having a pocket knife, and a kid has to stand with his feet shoulder length apart. Another kid will toss the knife, getting the knife as close to the kid’s foot as possible, sticking the knife in the ground. Another kid will try to get it closer. The closest one wins. What? I remember only tossing my pocket knife to get it to stick into the ground. No other kids involved. Then there was “Rover, Rover.” And even my husband and I remember the name, how it sounded when you called it out. I had to look it up, and I suppose we played that game at school. But I was never really into games, not even sports except for tether ball. I was good at tether ball.
“There were the long evenings and you can hear what the neighbors are saying, and the other night we went out in the back yard to lie on our backs on a blanket and watch the meteor showers.” Yes. As a kid we even took our sleeping bags outside and slept in them. Such simple things that bring pleasure, and later in life, bring back memories. He believes that then, back in 1957, kids were at camp because “What are kids going to do with themselves all summer?” "It might be nice,” he said, "if they dug themselves a hole or spent the day kicking a can." I don’t know about all day, but I have kicked cans to the grocery store. Then he says that they could fill the hole with water, for no other reason than the fact that they could.
Then kids would mix up things in water and dare other kids to drink it, telling them that it tasted good. I know that one. My brother once put Pepto Bismo in a glass of water and talked our neighbor, Kenny Gibbs, into drinking it, telling him that it was Kool-Aid. He also put salt in a sugar bowl and got me to taste it, saying it was sugar, and proving it by taking a small teaspoon himself. His bite was sugar. I gagged on mine. He once told me that dirt tasted good, so I tried it. The author talked about how some kids would eat dirt for a penny.
Kids played marbles. Do they still? I played marbles and Jacks. When it rained kids played in mud puddles, they put sticks in water to watch them float away. We skipped stones on the river, and most of all there was no structure in our life, just be home by dinner time. We just did what they felt like doing at the time, and sometimes I was bored too.
Back then kids would water the lawn with a hose by spraying it back and forth and in arcs, “washing the walk, and the porch and the window screen and your father in the living room reading the paper.”
He, now a father, ended the book with these words, “If you will excuse me, I have an appointment with myself to sit on the front steps and watch some grass grow.”
February 19, 2017
Childhood is a seriously serious business. Smith gets that. He's written one of the most charming (and funny) books about childhood I've ever read, but he's very very serious.
He gets the balancing act between childhood's riotous happiness ("we watched men...climb telephone poles--I can hear the sound now of climbing irons on a pole, this was a race of heroes!") and its despair.
There was the time when I owed a boy I will call Charlie Pagliaro, because that was almost his name, one hundred and forty-four immies [marbles]. He played me until I had no immies, then he extended me credit, and I doubled and redoubled, and staggered home trying to absorb the fact that I owed him one hundred and forty-four immies.
Now the first thing to understand is that there is no such thing as one hundred and forty-four immies. Twenty maybe, or with the help of your good friends, thirty-six, or maybe by going into servitude for the rest of your life to every kid on the whole block, you might get up to about sixty. But there is no such thing as one hundred and forty-four marbles, that's the first thing.
The second thing is that Charlie told me he would cut my head off with his knife— which was no boy scout knife, Charlie being, believe me, no boy scout. The third thing is that I believed Charlie would do it. The fourth thing is that I believed Charlie believed he would do it. I still do. Immies were a penny apiece then.
You go to your mother and say, "I owe Charlie Pagliaro one hundred and forty-four marbles." Your mother says, "I told you not to play for keeps." You go to your father and you say, "I owe Charlie Pagliaro one hundred and forty-four marbles." Your father says, "One hundred and forty-four? Well, tell him you didn't mean to go that high."
You go to your best friend. He believes that Charlie Pagliaro will cut your head off. He lends you three immies."
This is serious stuff. Smith makes it funny, but that's only because we're not ten any more, and we've kidded ourselves that just because we deal in a different unit of currency (one immy = £10,000 or whatever) the stakes are less for a child.
I don't want to use the word "thesis" in connection with Smith's book - he's anti-pretension in all its forms ("Ladies who don't know a posteriori from tertium quid carry the words "sibling rivalry" in the pocketbooks of their minds as faithfully as their no-smear lipstick.") - but his...contention, then, is that unstructured boredom is better for children's powers of observation and imagination than any formal occupation.
All of us, for a long time, spent a long time picking wild flowers. Catching tadpoles. Looking for arrowheads. Getting our feet wet. Playing with mud. And sand. And water. You understand, not doing anything. What there was to do with sand was let it run through your fingers. What there was to do with mud was pat it, and thrust in it, lift it up and throw it down.
It's a simple point of view, but what lifts Smith's book above the herd is - partly - the sense of nostalgia: he's been there, he's loved that mud, he wishes life were still that uncomplicated. He's not blind to the tortures children inflict on each other, but his belief in the essential democracy & tolerance of childhood keeps the horrors in their place.
It was a pitiful wreck of a tarpaper hut, and in it I learned the difference between boys and girls, I learned that all fathers did that, I learned to swear, to play with myself, to sleep in the afternoon, I learned that some people were Catholics and some people were Protestants and some people were Jews, that people came from different places. I learned that other kids wondered, too, who they would have been if their fathers had not married their mothers, wondered if you could dig a hole right to the center of the earth, wondered if you could kill yourself by holding your breath. (None of us could.)
I learned that with three people assembled, it was only for the briefest interludes that all three liked each other.
The book also gains from the subtext of his anger at a too-structured world.
After a while the infant sat down in the puddle and did nothing. My little boy had gone swimming. My wife had gone swimming. I had gone swimming. We all sat in our own little puddles and did nothing. We were doing nothing. We were not particularly worried about it. That's one of the reasons you come to a swimming pool. To sit on your duffs and swim and after a while, just sit on your duffs. There is a difference between doing nothing and being bored. Being bored is a judgment you make on yourself. Doing nothing is a state of being.
Kids know about this, if you'll leave them be.
Track this book down. And, next time you have nothing to do, read it.
He gets the balancing act between childhood's riotous happiness ("we watched men...climb telephone poles--I can hear the sound now of climbing irons on a pole, this was a race of heroes!") and its despair.
There was the time when I owed a boy I will call Charlie Pagliaro, because that was almost his name, one hundred and forty-four immies [marbles]. He played me until I had no immies, then he extended me credit, and I doubled and redoubled, and staggered home trying to absorb the fact that I owed him one hundred and forty-four immies.
Now the first thing to understand is that there is no such thing as one hundred and forty-four immies. Twenty maybe, or with the help of your good friends, thirty-six, or maybe by going into servitude for the rest of your life to every kid on the whole block, you might get up to about sixty. But there is no such thing as one hundred and forty-four marbles, that's the first thing.
The second thing is that Charlie told me he would cut my head off with his knife— which was no boy scout knife, Charlie being, believe me, no boy scout. The third thing is that I believed Charlie would do it. The fourth thing is that I believed Charlie believed he would do it. I still do. Immies were a penny apiece then.
You go to your mother and say, "I owe Charlie Pagliaro one hundred and forty-four marbles." Your mother says, "I told you not to play for keeps." You go to your father and you say, "I owe Charlie Pagliaro one hundred and forty-four marbles." Your father says, "One hundred and forty-four? Well, tell him you didn't mean to go that high."
You go to your best friend. He believes that Charlie Pagliaro will cut your head off. He lends you three immies."
This is serious stuff. Smith makes it funny, but that's only because we're not ten any more, and we've kidded ourselves that just because we deal in a different unit of currency (one immy = £10,000 or whatever) the stakes are less for a child.
I don't want to use the word "thesis" in connection with Smith's book - he's anti-pretension in all its forms ("Ladies who don't know a posteriori from tertium quid carry the words "sibling rivalry" in the pocketbooks of their minds as faithfully as their no-smear lipstick.") - but his...contention, then, is that unstructured boredom is better for children's powers of observation and imagination than any formal occupation.
All of us, for a long time, spent a long time picking wild flowers. Catching tadpoles. Looking for arrowheads. Getting our feet wet. Playing with mud. And sand. And water. You understand, not doing anything. What there was to do with sand was let it run through your fingers. What there was to do with mud was pat it, and thrust in it, lift it up and throw it down.
It's a simple point of view, but what lifts Smith's book above the herd is - partly - the sense of nostalgia: he's been there, he's loved that mud, he wishes life were still that uncomplicated. He's not blind to the tortures children inflict on each other, but his belief in the essential democracy & tolerance of childhood keeps the horrors in their place.
It was a pitiful wreck of a tarpaper hut, and in it I learned the difference between boys and girls, I learned that all fathers did that, I learned to swear, to play with myself, to sleep in the afternoon, I learned that some people were Catholics and some people were Protestants and some people were Jews, that people came from different places. I learned that other kids wondered, too, who they would have been if their fathers had not married their mothers, wondered if you could dig a hole right to the center of the earth, wondered if you could kill yourself by holding your breath. (None of us could.)
I learned that with three people assembled, it was only for the briefest interludes that all three liked each other.
The book also gains from the subtext of his anger at a too-structured world.
After a while the infant sat down in the puddle and did nothing. My little boy had gone swimming. My wife had gone swimming. I had gone swimming. We all sat in our own little puddles and did nothing. We were doing nothing. We were not particularly worried about it. That's one of the reasons you come to a swimming pool. To sit on your duffs and swim and after a while, just sit on your duffs. There is a difference between doing nothing and being bored. Being bored is a judgment you make on yourself. Doing nothing is a state of being.
Kids know about this, if you'll leave them be.
Track this book down. And, next time you have nothing to do, read it.
October 11, 2008
Hard to believe this was written in 1957. The author was already lamenting the fact that kids no longer just hung around and did nothing. This is such a great little book. Americans, especially those over 50 that grew up here in the U.S. will be sick with nostalgia from reading this.
June 16, 2011
Loved this. I wish I could make the whole world read it.
June 25, 2019
Author and playwright Robert Paul Smith has produced a small gem of memoir with this book. It was first published in 1957 and reprinted at least as recently as 2010 (my copy). The subject matter, how children entertained themselves growing up in the 1920s, makes for light reading and may even seem inconsequential. But now, nearly a hundred years later, the subject of children's play is serious business. Many issues, such as helicopter parenting, lack of personal contact with peers, immaturity of college students, and associated problems of the post-Millennial, iGen, are related to the subject matter of this book.
Smith describes a generation of young people whose rough edges were worn off by interaction with one another, largely unsupervised by adults. They acquired self confidence, the ability to assess and come to terms with others, and create interactions with the natural world around them. They grew into what Tom Brokaw would later label, "The Greatest Generation." When the book was written, adult supervision and organization were becoming prevalent. Smith cites the Little Leagues replacing the ragtag pickup games of his youth as an example of the change underway. Today, with travel teams for different sports, and nascent professionalization of athletics beginning in high school, there is little spontaneity left. The greater problem of today is less this over-organization of sport than it is the disappearance of young people into their manifold screens, where they lack personal human interactions.
I would recommend the book not only because it provides a pleasant, nostalgic experience, but because of the many links it possesses with contemporary society.
Smith describes a generation of young people whose rough edges were worn off by interaction with one another, largely unsupervised by adults. They acquired self confidence, the ability to assess and come to terms with others, and create interactions with the natural world around them. They grew into what Tom Brokaw would later label, "The Greatest Generation." When the book was written, adult supervision and organization were becoming prevalent. Smith cites the Little Leagues replacing the ragtag pickup games of his youth as an example of the change underway. Today, with travel teams for different sports, and nascent professionalization of athletics beginning in high school, there is little spontaneity left. The greater problem of today is less this over-organization of sport than it is the disappearance of young people into their manifold screens, where they lack personal human interactions.
I would recommend the book not only because it provides a pleasant, nostalgic experience, but because of the many links it possesses with contemporary society.
July 7, 2024
One day I decided to actually read the book with the curious title I remembered seeing in my parents' collection growing up. Smith is a bit older than my parents were but what he describes sounds like the suburban version of their childhood with the amazing amount of freedom kids once had. Some of the lingo is familiar to me (labonza), some of it isn't - we never had scribblage or argle-bargle - but kids always were inventive with language (looking at you, skibidi toilet). By my time, no one wore knickerbockers but we still learned the rudiments of physics by putting things on the turntable to see how far they would be thrown under the sofa. And learning the names of old records, magazines and books was fun. Some of it had to be read as it was written, tongue-in-cheek, particularly the part about torture. The rapidograph illustrations by Spanfeller helped a lot to set the scene - both author and illustrator did time in Westchester County I think. He was the kind to draw without looking at the page and the drawings are perfect.
September 23, 2018
I read this more than ten years ago, but I still think about it often. Go play!
Read
August 4, 2019For me this was a very easy-going, sweet but slightly chaotic book. I think the best part of it was that it made me think and reflect on my own childhood.
December 17, 2020
It was okay for me but I could see how it had a much bigger impact on my parents' generation.
August 17, 2022
A minor classic. Very readable today - and should be
May 1, 2024
I adored this book. The author's voice was entertaining, enthralling--a Steinbeck unfurling the ways of childhood.
November 19, 2018
old man yells at cloud for a what felt like 600 pages. kind of funny.
May 27, 2015
Now it is summer, in this perishing suburb where I live, to which we moved because when we lived in the city, we had to go away every summer so the kids could learn about grass.
[Building the hut:] the hut; well, that was a place where we could live. I have been trying hard to remember just how we started to build it. Certainly there was no foundation. I seem to remember building the first wall in one piece, boards and tarpaper hammered onto a couple of two-by-fours, and the tw-by-fours extending below, the whole structure raised and the extensions going into holes, and rocks being jammed around. I imagine we got the second wall up the same way, and ran roof beams across the top so that it stood up. The roof, if memory serves, and I am getting pretty dubious about that, was something that was lying around the lot. An abandoned cellar door, perhaps.
I am lying a little now—hell, I am lying a lot. I don't really remember building the hut. I remember repairing it, and expanding it, and putting a better door in it, a hasp and a lock. I remember packing rocks from the rockpile around the perimeter, to strengthen the hut—it was by then a fortress—against any attack. I remember tamping down the dirt floor, and finding a piece of linoleum and a gunny sack to brighten the corner which was mine.
I suppose, when I come right down to it, none of us could stand upright in the hut, and I have a kind of notion that when there were more than two of us in it, no one of us could move.
This is a hell of a note, on an August afternoon in my declining years to realize that really, that hut, that shining palace, that home away from home, that most secure of all habitations, was not much bigger than a big doghouse, and could have been pushed over by an angered Shetland pony. (Which any of us were going to get any moment, or a magic lantern, as soon as we had sold thirty-four million packages of blueing.)
No matter. It was ours. It belonged to us. And if you were not one of us, you could not come in. We had rules, oh Lord, how we had rules. We had passwords. We had oaths. We had conclaves.
It was a pitiful wreck of a tarpaper hut, and in it I learned the difference between boys and girls, I learned that all fathers did that, I learned to swear, to play with myself, to sleep in the afternoon, I learned that some people were Catholics and some people were Protestants and some people were Jews, that people came from different places. I learned that other kids wondered, too, who they would have been if their fathers had not married their mothers, wondered if you could dig a hole right to the center of the earth, wondered if you could kill yourself by holding your breath. (None of us could.)
I learned that with three people assembled, it was only for the briefest interludes that all three liked each other. Mitch and I were leagued against Simon. And then Simon and I against Mitch. And then—but you remember. I didn't know then just how to handle that situation. I still don't. It is my coldly comforting feeling that nobody still does, including nations, and that's what the trouble with the world is. That's what the trouble with the world was then—when Mitch and Simon were the two and I was the one.
There is a difference between doing nothing and being bored. Being bored is a judgment you make over yourself. Doing nothing is a state of being.
Kids know about this, if you'll leave them be.
[Building the hut:] the hut; well, that was a place where we could live. I have been trying hard to remember just how we started to build it. Certainly there was no foundation. I seem to remember building the first wall in one piece, boards and tarpaper hammered onto a couple of two-by-fours, and the tw-by-fours extending below, the whole structure raised and the extensions going into holes, and rocks being jammed around. I imagine we got the second wall up the same way, and ran roof beams across the top so that it stood up. The roof, if memory serves, and I am getting pretty dubious about that, was something that was lying around the lot. An abandoned cellar door, perhaps.
I am lying a little now—hell, I am lying a lot. I don't really remember building the hut. I remember repairing it, and expanding it, and putting a better door in it, a hasp and a lock. I remember packing rocks from the rockpile around the perimeter, to strengthen the hut—it was by then a fortress—against any attack. I remember tamping down the dirt floor, and finding a piece of linoleum and a gunny sack to brighten the corner which was mine.
I suppose, when I come right down to it, none of us could stand upright in the hut, and I have a kind of notion that when there were more than two of us in it, no one of us could move.
This is a hell of a note, on an August afternoon in my declining years to realize that really, that hut, that shining palace, that home away from home, that most secure of all habitations, was not much bigger than a big doghouse, and could have been pushed over by an angered Shetland pony. (Which any of us were going to get any moment, or a magic lantern, as soon as we had sold thirty-four million packages of blueing.)
No matter. It was ours. It belonged to us. And if you were not one of us, you could not come in. We had rules, oh Lord, how we had rules. We had passwords. We had oaths. We had conclaves.
It was a pitiful wreck of a tarpaper hut, and in it I learned the difference between boys and girls, I learned that all fathers did that, I learned to swear, to play with myself, to sleep in the afternoon, I learned that some people were Catholics and some people were Protestants and some people were Jews, that people came from different places. I learned that other kids wondered, too, who they would have been if their fathers had not married their mothers, wondered if you could dig a hole right to the center of the earth, wondered if you could kill yourself by holding your breath. (None of us could.)
I learned that with three people assembled, it was only for the briefest interludes that all three liked each other. Mitch and I were leagued against Simon. And then Simon and I against Mitch. And then—but you remember. I didn't know then just how to handle that situation. I still don't. It is my coldly comforting feeling that nobody still does, including nations, and that's what the trouble with the world is. That's what the trouble with the world was then—when Mitch and Simon were the two and I was the one.
There is a difference between doing nothing and being bored. Being bored is a judgment you make over yourself. Doing nothing is a state of being.
Kids know about this, if you'll leave them be.
April 4, 2012
This book wasn't quite what I expected - a review I read a long time ago led me to imagine more of a parenting treatise, full of theories and exposition ... instead this is simply a short narrative of a childhood wholly unlike the kind our kids experience today. In Robert Paul Smith's world (he grew up in the 1920s, best guess) children were simply left to their own devices. There were no extra-curricular activities, no sanitized play zones, and parents did not play with their children. Kids went out in the street and had their own universe. There was lots of good and bad mixed together in this system - the author admits that "[today] I don't think kids beat up on each other as much as they used to", for example. But he notes that "These days, you see a kid lying on his back and looking blank and you wonder what's wrong with him. There's nothing wrong with him. He's trying to find out whether he breathes differently when he's thinking about it than when he's just breathing."
I picked up the book because of my own observations in parenting lately. It was a quick, enjoyable read, although I know that most of Smith's childhood world is quite impossible to re-create today. Nonetheless, it gave me plenty to think about.... about leaving kids to think and figure things out for themselves, and to worry less about empty hours.
I picked up the book because of my own observations in parenting lately. It was a quick, enjoyable read, although I know that most of Smith's childhood world is quite impossible to re-create today. Nonetheless, it gave me plenty to think about.... about leaving kids to think and figure things out for themselves, and to worry less about empty hours.
March 3, 2008
I love this book - makes me nostalgic for a childhood that was before my time
June 1, 2009
Smashing memoir about growing up in simpler times, including full instructions for activities that have since passed out of childhood.
to-read-4-would-like-to
February 17, 2010http://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-Out-W...
I'm not sure if this is fiction or if it is stories of the author's youth.
I'm not sure if this is fiction or if it is stories of the author's youth.
May 16, 2011
great little meditation on childhood and the art of 'doing nothing'.
May 3, 2012
Cute book, but dated. Written as a man reflects back to his childhood and compares it to the childhood his children are experiencing. Humorous.
February 9, 2011
Made me laugh out loud!
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