Go to your room

Boomer Musings

By J. Leslie Riseden

“Go to your room.” That was the worst thing a kid could hear from her parents. “Go to your room.” Ugh. You’re in trouble now.

Why was that so terrible? I had to think about this for a while. It was my room, after all, where I lived with all my invaluable keepsakes ... yearbooks and fan magazines, post cards and polaroids. My ticket stub from the Beatles concert (Yes!) The swizzle stick from the Shirley Temple my dad ordered for me on my 13th birthday. My posters and pin-ups of Frankie, Fabian and Ricky (for post-boomers, that’s Nelson -- not Martin.) So, what was so terrible about being sent to my room?

Well, here’s what I think: When we were sent to our room, we were removed from all diversions, all human contact. We were banished from the family for a while, and it was truly a punishment. It was not a good place to be for an extended period, because all the good stuff was somewhere else. We stayed in our room only if we were sick (or we got in trouble) because there was nothing fun to do in there.

Sometimes, your friends might come by to see if you could come out and play – which they did without notice, of course, because, well, that’s just what you did. Your mom had to tell them you couldn’t come out because you were being punished. Yeah, that was embarrassing. You had been sent to your room and you couldn’t communicate with the outside world. Maybe you could read a book or study, or – heaven forbid – clean your room. But, geesh, that would be like being punished twice for the same infraction. Isn’t there a law against that?

There were no PCs, laptops or tablets. No video games, no streaming movies, and no personal stereo. There was no cell phone, no texting. There was no internet, so there was no Snapchat, Twitter, Skype or Facebook (or the dozen other apps that have been developed since I started this week’s column.) The only TV in the house was probably in the den; the only stereo was in the living room. We did our homework at the dining table, because that was the only place where there was enough room to spread out notebooks, writing paper, library books and four volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. There was usually only one phone in the house – in the kitchen – and that was permanently attached to the wall.

It makes me wonder ... where do parents today send their tweens for a time out? In their rooms, kids have computers with internet, movies and video games. They have televisions, stereos and cell phones. Seems to me, parents today might be having trouble getting kids to come OUT of their rooms. If all the good stuff was back in the living room, maybe they would.