"There is a serious need for play" according to Scientific American Mind.
I love Scientific American Mind. This magazine is for those of us who know it is necessary to know scientific things, but realize our ability to understand scientific jargon to be limited.
I am playing, therefore, when I read this magazine. I sit outside, should it be warm enough, sipping ice tea with lime, and look at the pictures avidly.
This article shows a grown man (albeit one, I suspect, younger than my own son, thereby making it difficult for me to see him as the grown man the editors of this magazine wish me to), wearing a suit and tie, on his knees, playing with building blocks.
He is having such a fun time. He's probably on lunch break, and he is so happy and childlike and caught up in what he's doing that he obviously won't worry about messing the crease in his trousers.
The editors have a list of suggestions as to how to play, should you be one of those adults who doesn't know how to play--
I wonder if they worried one may not know how to play as an adult, or they really believe there are grownups out there who honestly couldn't figure out how to play even if a gun was to their head.
I won't argue the point.
I just know when I read the list of suggestions, I felt totally superior, because this list didn't mention swing sets or building blocks, or my other favorite (a habit that took me through the first three years of my children's lives), coloring books and crayons.
It mentioned Body play, Object play and Social play.
Obviously they meant sex, shopping and partying.
But that's not play. That is appropriate adult behavior, which not the point of this article at all.
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