{"id":4373,"date":"2011-04-08T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:21:57","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"childs-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2011\/04\/08\/childs-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Child\u2019s Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Caleb Rummel<\/p>\n

To begin, I am 22 years old. Whatever a particular young woman with whom I spend a lot of time may say, I am not 8 years old. That said, I really like toys.<\/p>\n

You may say, “Of course, the photographer likes gear and calls them toys.” That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, as Woody so clearly defined it, child’s playthings.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Some of my favorites include my Nerf gun, yo-yo, Rubik’s Cube, Silly Putty and Hot Wheels. These things have held a special place in my heart for a long time. It is not my intention to hold on to a past that is gone but to keep a spirit of simple joy. I don’t need an iPhone to keep me entertained when a ball-in-a-cup will occupy me for half an hour.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Entertainment is a great, but not the best, purpose for hanging on to these old pastimes. I find them incredibly relaxing. A lot of these involve some sort of repetitive motion that’s soothing. To mash a ball of Silly Putty in your hands or brainlessly spin a Rubik’s Cube is therapeutic. Even if you don’t think that would be the case with toys, I’m sure you have something you do that’s calming: biking, running, fishing, going to the batting cages. Toys allow for another form of release in the same way.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One way I am very childlike with my toys is I think they allow me to be epic, if only for a moment and if only in my mind. This summer, I went to Disney World and got for myself and my best friend double-ended lightsabers. We have had the most intense duels in the dorm. I also got a wand on that same journey to Orlando, the Elder Wand, no less. There have been too many times that I’ve run around the Bison office yelling “Expelliarmus!” at my co-workers to make their pens fly across the room or “Petrificus Totalus” to make them fall out of their chairs. As I said, epic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I say all of this not to just tell you about how I relax or to say what I do is better than what you do. I say this to encourage you to be not afraid of keeping around some of the things from your childhood if they serve a good purpose. If you still put together Legos and K’Nex or pretend you are the Flash as you sprint the 100-meter let the childlike spirit come in to you and free you of your adult worries. Eight-year-old Caleb may still be in 1996, and that’s where he needs to stay, but he didn’t have any worries, so his visits are welcome.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

CALEB RUMMEL serves as the photographer for the 2010-2011 Bison. He may be contacted atcrummel@harding.edu<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Caleb Rummel To begin, I am 22 years old. Whatever a particular young woman with whom I spend a lot of time may say, I am not 8…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":376,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-4373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-hurricane-florence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}