The Power of Children's Play

I have a lot of nonsense in my mind, and some of it is actually supposed to be there. Children love gobbledygook and I am the queen of "Mairzy Doats" and "Bibbety Boppety Boo."  From purple cows to Jabberwockys, I have rhymes that make linguistic imaginations dance. And if you are in need for a rhyme to choose who is "it" in an outdoor game, I am your go-to gal.

But one nonsense rhyme is stuck in my head, but clings on imperfectly. I don't remember all of it, and it cries out to me to be remembered and shared. It is a "choosing it" song from the Old World. I know there were verses. Once upon a time, I knew the verse; it was something about Holter Bolter having a kestl (little box.) Or maybe he was Helter Belter? Vowels shift in my mind and colors fade. But Nana taught me this rhyme from her childhood, and it was from her mother's childhood, and it is important to me.

It goes something like this:

Eyns Tsvei Drei

Lahzer lizer lei

Ockn Bockn beyde glockn

Tsiddl, piddl, dachs aroys.

(An aside: I just called my father and was thrilled beyond thrilled that he carries this important nonsense in his memory too!)

I sometimes feel the weight of the Yiddish language. I can't explain it. I know that people speak it. Once I was in a Starbucks in Whitehouse Station, of all homogenous places, and a Chassidic family came in chatting away in the Mameloshn. But just as my Nana's language of the north was different from my Papa's language of the south, the language of the Chassids from New York is different from the language of secular children on the streets of Eastern Europe and the Lower East Side. 

A vanished world.  I cling on to this nonsense rhyme because it tells me that children played. Children chanted rhymes and ran around and scraped their knees while having fun.  And the rhymes were important enough to be brought across the sea and then taught to me. I wish I remembered better.

A vanished world...earlier this week, I urged my students to spend less time with illuminated screens. I urged them to talk to one another, face to face. Take walks. Play games. Learn duets. But don't just sit with Minecraft, even if it has some educational merit. And certainly don't spend three or four hours a day on Call of Duty or other violent games. 

For a few of my students, it was clear that this speech was nothing new. But for a significant majority, eyes bulged. "But, Miss Bengels," a polite seventh grade girl said to me, "It isn't like when you were little. We don't live close to our friends. There are no sidewalks. We don't have large families, and it isn't safe."

It isn't safe. We live in a world of 24-hour news cycles where we hear of all the dangers around us. Staying closer to the nest is much safer when men in white trucks drive around offering lollipops to children...and worse, much much worse. We know about things that people didn't used to know about, or talk about.

A language is fading away, and along with it a time period. Words still matter but counting games to choose who is "it" will be lost. And here I sit, typing my heart out to an illuminated screen and a group of friends around the world who are connected to me through an internet that would have been beyond little Emily's imagination, let alone my grandparents' or great grandparents' wildest dreams.

What if there were the 24 hour news cycle in the age of the pogroms or the years leading up to the Holocaust? Would it have been different? Would it have been harder for political leaders to turn a blind eye?

What if there were an Internet to help families communicate with one another when traveling across the sea to the New World? My Persian friends can Skype with their family back in Tehran. When I was in Uruguay, I used FaceTime to chat with my parents. Would Yiddish have stood more of a chance? Would it have not needed the push for a renaissance that groups like Yugentruf and the Yiddish Book Center are pushing for today?

And what if the children of today could play more? What if they had more unstructured time to let their energy run wild? Would there be fewer cases of ADHD and other focus issues? What if they had tools like nonsense rhymes to help negotiate schoolyard decisions? Would we have stronger social skills and deeper empathy?  

I do not know. But I do know that I will continue to encourage play. It is more powerful than we know!