Tucson CitizenTucson Citizen

Play dates take the fun out of being a kid

I hate the term “play date.” It annoys me to no end. What happened to knocking on the neighbor’s door and asking, “Can Susie come out to play?” Now everyone has to check their schedules, make sure it doesn’t conflict with some other event, and inevitably, one or both parents have to drive several miles to drop a child off or meet at a park.

Whatever Type A parent who started the whole play date thing ought to be shot.

To be fair, we are much to blame for the situation. We send our kids to a school that is not in our neighborhood (though the local public school is nowhere near our house, either), so all their friends live in other parts of town. It makes it tough for kids to have friends. Then there are the friends who have left the school, but still want to have play dates.

And of course, we have to know where our kids are at all times. No running around the neighborhood till all hours during the summer. Being a kid these days is no fun.

But just because I’m partly to blame, doesn’t mean I have to like it.

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Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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