Share on the Playground

It was one of universal laws of childhood: You don’t bring candy onto the playground unless you have enough for everyone. Milky Way bars were for private feasts. Those little dots of candy on paper strips were good playground fare. The same rule applied to chewing gum.  Chicklets were hard to share, but Wrigley’s peppermint  could be torn into three, and even four bits in an emergency.

I remember a sort of mass hysteria when candy was brought out. All the other kids would run to the kid with the loot. Hey, Terry’s got candy! What’s he got? Can I have some? Where’d he get it? How come he got it? Terry, or Valerie, or Henry, or me, would be the star attraction for a few minutes. It felt sort of good to be the dispenser of such largesse.

Maybe it’s because none of us had a lot of money in the neighborhoods I grew up in, but that “rule” was as present in Rego Park, Queens and Mineola,Long Island, as it was in East Patterson, NJ and campgrounds in Pennsylvania. Kids just shared what they had or stayed home and gorged alone. You shared with everyone there,  even with the cousin who called you four eyes, and the girl whose hair was ratty, and the boy who cheated in t-ball.

How did it happen that those kids, we kids, are now all grown up, even senior citizens, and so many of us go out onto life’s playground every day and don’t share?