‘Mum, Mum, another tooth fell out today and I didn’t even cry,’ screeched five-year-old Low the Elder, in a voice so high-pitched with excitement that neighbourhood dogs added earmuffs to their Christmas list.
‘Fabulous,’ says me, full of parental emotion, ‘so you know what that means, don’t you?’
The answers I was going for were:
a. he’s getting to be a big boy now;
b. he was so, so brave not to shed a tear; or
c. his big tooth would soon come through.
The answer I got? A huge toothless grin, followed by, ‘Yep, four packets of football stickers and three Curly Wurlies.’
The gum was still throbbing, the tooth was still warm, yet he’d already divvied up his dosh from the Tooth Fairy. Oh, he makes me so proud. I swear that boy is going to be an economist when he grows up.
Or treasurer of his cell block’s savings scheme.
However, according to new research, I should enjoy his innocent optimism while I can because apparently childhood is on the way out. A survey by TV channel, the Cartoon Network, has concluded that today’s kids stop believing in characters like the Tooth Fairy, elves and Santa a whole four years earlier than their parents’ generation.
Which means my boys will stop writing letters to Lapland at the devastatingly young age of thirty-six.
Apparently, back in the good old days, when taking drugs meant Disprin and the worldwide web was what Spiderman used to catch the bad guys, sixty-seven per cent of adults still believed in fairies at the age of ten. Now? Tinkerbell is up the dole office looking for her giro shortly after a kid’s sixth birthday.
But the biggest tragedy of the new findings, and yes, I am aware that this makes me sound like a nostalgic old fart, is that the survey confirmed that games from our childhood are nothing but a distant memory.
Although, I suppose in today’s consumerist nanny state of cosseted kids and rampant political correctness, it’s not really surprising.
Peevers (posh name: hopscotch) now results in an ASBO for chalking up pavements. Health & Safety would batter you to death with a pair of clackers for building a rope swing. And E-numbers rule out standing still long enough for a game of statues.
Today’s extended families mean that a game of aunts and uncles would take so long it would have to be interrupted by life-sustaining acts like eating and sleeping.
Bicycle helmets are a great idea that I fully endorse, support, and force my boys to wear. However, there’s no denying that they’ve replaced the pure gallus headgear that was mandatory for riding our Choppers – the hood of an anorak, with said jacket flying in the wind behind us like a cape, à la Batman/Wonder Woman/Elvis in the Las Vegas years.
And, of course, iPods, Playstations, Xboxes, Nintendos, computers, satellite TV and Gameboys have superseded our favourite playthings: pals.
Which is just as well, because role-playing is out of fashion, too. A game of doctors and nurses would undoubtedly now result in a lawsuit for medical misconduct. Cops and robbers would violate the perpetrator’s human rights. And playing cowboys could lead to legal action for contraventions of the firearms code.
Modern technology means that it would now be insanity to snog your boyfriend behind the bicycle sheds – someone would film it on a mobile phone and your dad would have irrefutable photographic evidence within seconds.
And the birth of kids’ designer labels has banished those heady days when there were only two types of trainers: plimsolls and Green Flash.
Nope, I wouldn’t trade growing up in the Seventies and Eighties for anything, and I wish that someone, somewhere – Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the nanny state – could deliver to today’s children the really important things in life: innocence, freedom, and a childish, outdoor life full of friends and riotous fun.
Oh, and any chance that while they’re at it they could throw in four packets of football stickers and three Curly Wurlies?