Child of the Sixties Forever

3 Lyrics From 1960s Pop Crossover Songs That Are Absolute Poetry By Alex Hopper

2026-11-11T08:28:35.763-08:00

These three 1960s pop crossover songs feature lyrics that are purely poetic. These songwriters flexed their ability to do more than write a catchy melody. Indeed, they could also write memorable lyrics that were deeply profound.

Though The Beatles were bona fide rock stars, their sound also had a pop element. Moreover, their cultural impact firmly puts them in crossover territory. However you want to characterize their sound, they emboldened every instrumental with top-notch lyricism. Take “In My Life”, for example. Seldom has a song been as simply beautiful and poetic as this one.

“Though I know I’ll never lose affection / For people and things that went before / I know I’ll often stop and think about them / In my life, I love you more,” the lyrics to “In My Life” read. For decades, this song has stood as a symbol of this band’s stellar songwriting and the power of poetry that we can relate to.

“Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell

This folk song gained major popularity in the 1960s. When we look back on this era, this track defined the culture. It might not be today’s bubblegum pop, but it effectively crossed over into the pop realm when it was released. More than just sonic appeal, though, this track is relatable, too. With this ballad, Joni Mitchell penned one of the most stunning and universal tracks ever.

“Tears and fears and feeling proud / To say ‘I love you’ right out loud / Dreams and schemes and circus crowds / I’ve looked at life that way,” the lyrics read. This song is pure poetry, teaching us all about life in a more poignant way than most of us can muster.

“Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles

Circling back to The Beatles, we have “Eleanor Rigby”. “Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice / In the church where a wedding has been / Lives in a dream / Waits at the window, wearing the face / That she keeps in a jar by the door / Who is it for,” the lyrics read. This tender track says a lot about our own lives through its characters. It’s one of Paul McCartney’s most poetic tracks, cementing The Beatles’ legacy as a powerfully narrative band.

“All the lonely people / Where do they all come from? / All the lonely people / Where do they all belong,” the chorus continues. This song has unforgettable imagery that sticks in our minds long after it ends, like any great bit of poetry.

Did you hear that the world is ending on Friday? That's according to three scientists in the 1960s.Chas Newkey-Burden

2026-11-11T08:27:43.188-08:00

Why scientists in 1960s predicted world would end on Friday

Projections of continued population growth caused ‘immediate stir’ and raised fears for the future

By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK

Did you hear that the world is ending on Friday? That's according to three scientists in the 1960s.

“Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve,” they said in an article in the journal Science published on 4 November 1960. “They will be squeezed to death.”

Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026

The Austrian-American physicist Heinz von Foerster and two colleagues wrote the paper that had the sobering title: “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026”.

“The work was based on a simple observation,” said Science in October – “the time it took for the human population to double in size kept getting shorter”. So, drawing on population estimates from about 400BC until 1958, the authors “came up with an equation that best described the trend”.

By 2020, they predicted, the human population would exceed 25 billion, but the researchers “didn’t calculate when humanity would run out of food, land, or energy”. They merely concluded that “at some point” in 2026, their equation “ceased to give meaningful results because the predicted population shot towards infinity”.

The claims caused an “immediate stir”, said Alan MacEachern, a history professor from Western University in Ontario, Canada, on The Conversation. There were stories in Time and The New York Times and the findings “became the subject of a series of Pogo comic strips”. Many commentators thought the article was “strictly a tongue-in-cheek comment on population fears”.

Lobbyists leapt upon it. In 1963, a witness from the chemical industry told a Canadian parliamentary committee that the report was an argument for chemical pesticides, which would, they argued, be needed to “feed the approaching population explosion”. In a 1971 US Supreme Court abortion case leading up to Roe v. Wade, it was cited as proof “there was no compelling reason for the government to favour increased population”.

But there were sceptics from the start. “In view of the comments that subsequently were published in this journal, an extensive discussion of this article does not seem to be required,” said Harold F. Dorn in Science two years later. Witheringly, he added that the prediction would set a record “for the short length of time required to demonstrate its unreliability”.

Demographers were “annoyed by what they saw as a provocation by outsiders” and “pointed out obvious flaws”, said Science in October. Yes, the “time it takes for the number of humans to double could get a lot shorter”, for example, but “certainly not shorter than the nine months it takes for a baby to develop”.

Nevertheless, the article was “regularly cited” and its predictions continued to appear “remarkably accurate”. That was the case until around 1993, “halfway to the predicted ‘doomsday’, when the global population began falling behind its forecasts”, said MacEachern.

Now, the global birth rate is “slightly less than half what it was in 1960”, so “hopefully, we will all wake up on November 13 to an ordinary day”.

Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i news site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.

2026-11-06T14:03:25.259-08:00

Buy it on Amazon

2026-11-06T08:36:36.715-08:00

Buy it on Amazon

2026-11-06T08:30:49.112-08:00

Buy it on Amazon

2026-11-06T07:18:35.050-08:00

Buy it at Amazon

Songs of the 1960s

2026-11-06T07:15:26.037-08:00

Buy it at Amazon

The Beatles!

2026-11-06T05:35:13.117-08:00

George

2026-11-06T05:27:07.714-08:00

Brian Epstien, the Beatles manager

2026-11-06T05:22:27.236-08:00

I do

2026-11-04T13:45:03.434-08:00

Remember these guys?

2026-11-04T13:44:17.401-08:00

Three sample chapters of my new novel

2026-11-02T07:35:50.407-08:00

THE GENIE OF CENTRAL
A love story
By
John William Tuohy

click here to buy the book at Amazon

\“Someday you will be old enough to starting reading fairy tales again” C.S.Lewis

CHAPTER ONE

“There are good days and there are bad days. And this is one of them” Lawrence Welk

“To everything there is a season, Henry,” Doctor Shay said softly, soothingly “A time to be born and a time to die”

“And this is my time” Henry said through hallow words as he stared at the vague pattern in the white tile floor. Sitting upright now on the examining table hoping against hope that the Doctor would tell him that it was not his time. That that was not what he meant, Henry had misunderstood him.

“And this is your time” the Doctor repeated softly.

“Damn it” Henry thought.

“Is there anyone I contact? Family?”

“No” He didn’t like this question and wanted to get part if quickly “I’m alone. It’s just me”

The Doctor had not expected that answer and he stumbled for the next thing to say and both men looked out the window, across Central Park and then returned their view to the sterile but neatly appointed room.

“Maybe” the Doctor said “Maybe social services. Maybe they can arrange for you to talk with someone about this”

“How long?” Henry asked

The Doctor hesitated to answer. All Doctors hesitate when they don’t know the answer, Henry thought.

“How long?” Henry asked again.

“It’s….it’s difficult to tell, Henry.” He answered without lifting his eyes from the white tile floor. “Bronchial cancer, it spreads quickly, very quickly. It kills over 500 people a day. I’m sorry, Henry, I can only imagine the horror of it all. I’m sorry, I just don’t know”

The Doctor tilted his head to the side and said “Into every life a little rain must fall”

Henry had been staring at the tile floor but hearing that he lifted his head quickly and looked at the Doctor in bewilderment “A little rain? You call this a little rain?”

The physicians face grew taught. Metaphorically speaking, yes”

“Well then, what’s metaphorical idea of a tsunami?”

The doctor placed his hand on Henry’s shoulder and guided him towards the door as he sighed, and patted him on the back and said “You have no idea how much this destroys me Henry”

When opened the office door to leave and the Doctor assumed Henry was out of ear shot said to his nurse “All right, that’s a wrap, we’re out’ta here”

Henry decided to walk to his home on the West Side. He strolled up Park Avenue and seeing an open door to an Episcopalian church he stepped inside. The Donick’s weren’t Episcopalian. They were Dutch Reformed of course. Dutch Reformed before it was reformed as his Knickerbocker mother said once. But the Donick’s were, in those early days when Manhattan was still mostly forest, social climbers and belong to the Dutch Reformed church was something to climb away from.

Inside the vestibule, Henry came across an elderly Priest. Approaching him, Henry said “I just found out I’m dying and I’d like to talk about it”

“We are all dying my son” the Priest replied.

“Yes” Henry answered “But metaphysics aside, I mean it, a doctor just told me I’m done for”

The Priest placed his open palm on Henry’s shoulder and said “Death is not the end.”

“Especially in my case” Henry said “I’ve written a will. The litigation over the estate will go on forever.”

The priest, seemingly hadn’t heard a word Henry said and offered “Deep sorrows and afflictions often touch the lives of Christians during their sojourn on the earth—and death is one of the major sorrows”

“Boy, you’re not kidding about that….I think” Henry said “I don’t really know what that means. Anyway, look, do I have to die? I mean what about God the loving, caring father, the one who hears our pleas and grants wishes. Can you arrange a meeting or how ever this is done?” Another thing, what should I expect? What about hell? My guess is hell will be like living Junior High school over and over again And then there’s whole heaven thing. You know, I always thought that if I lived a good life, I’d die and go to a nice duplex chalet in Switzerland, is it like that? Do you have any input on that? Its how I imagine it to be, but you know, the universe is made up of so much more than I can imagine. Do they send someone to pick you up? I’m rambling aren’t I?”

“I will never leave you nor forsake you” the Priest said.

“Your dying too?” Henry asked. “I appricate that, its very kind of you, but I’m talking about God, loving, caring and all that.”

“He is all that.”

“Whose he?” Henry asked.

“God” the priest replied.

“So, your familiar with him. Well, can you talk to him?

“Have you spoken to him?” the Priest asked.

“Well no, not really a religious type” Henry said sheepishly And I have a lot on plate right now. I’m sure he’s busy too, I mean, in all due respect, isn’t it part of your job? You know, interceding and all that? Look, I’m sorry to sound so self-involved, I know everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case, I don’t know why I believed that, I suppose we all do. Well, I’m babbling again.

“Jesus” the Prist said softly “was willing to die so we can have eternal life”

All right I’d like to cash in on that if I could. I mean, you know, maybe not eternal life, which would be awful, I mean, you know, a few more decades. Eternity’s a terrible thought. I mean, where’s would it all end?

“The righteous shouldn’t fear death” the Priest said

“Well,” Henry said “Let me be clearer, it’s not the fear thing, its simply not wanting to die. I don’t want to die”

“We live only as long as it takes to fulfill God’s purpose.”

“Gods purpose?”

“Yes”

“What has killing me got to do with fulfilling Gods purpose? I mean, he’s God, what does he need me for?”

“You are part of his purpose”

“But I don’t want to be a part of his purpose”

“We must take a positive approach to death my son”

I have a positive approach to death” Henry said “I'm positive I'm going to die and I’d like God to look into that for me.”

“God” the Pries said with a condescending smile “does determine to allow you to die—because He knows we are ready and His purpose for us in this physical life is fulfilled”

Well, in all due respect, God should mind his own Goddamn business and let me decide when I’m ready to go”

My son” the Priest said “It’s a wonderful thing to know that we are in God’s hands for eternity”

“Well, it was before I talked to you.” Henry said and excited the church and continued his walk home. He absentmindedly turned in to Central Park, and walked across the grassy knolls where he had frolicked as a child.

There is something very special about central park on a brisk fall day and Henry felt it now and he was genuinely surprised at his own calm, at how well he had taken, and was still dealing with, the news of his impending death. Then he spoke the words out loud to himself “You are going to die very soon”.

It was his loneliest moment made worse by the fact that as his world came apart all he could do was stare blankly and watch it happen. On the other hand, he thought it almost comical that the one time in his life he desperately needed someone came at the same time he so desperately needed to be alone. Then he panicked. He started to shake and he couldn’t breathe and he stretched his neck high into the air and took enormous gulps of breath. When he started to breathe again, he bents over quickly because the park was spinning around him. He staggered over to bench, sat on it, and wrapped his arms around his ribs. He felt pale and he was certain he would faint.

A homeless man pushing a shopping cart overloaded with rags, bottles and two car tires wheeled up to him and stopped.

“You okay, Mister?” the man asked.

Henry was so relieved to hear the kind words of another human being that against his will, his eyes flooded with tears, and he quickly brushed them aside.

“I’m dying. I’m going to die and I’m scared”

There was a pause between them and then the homeless man reached out and gently placed the very tips of his filthy fingers on the back of Henry’s hand and said “It’s okay to be scared. I’m an old guy, older than you, and I’m scared a lot and dying, heck, don’t blame you for being scared a lot. Dying’s a scary thing for everybody no matter who you are”

More tears came to Henry’s eyes, and he hated himself for it.

“It’s not that” Henry said “it’s……” and then he looked around the park as if the words he needed were hidden behind a tree, but they weren’t. He laughed but he didn’t know why and he said “I don’t want to die, not now”

The homeless man hung on Henry’s every syllable, for people, especially people dressed as a nicely as Henry, rarely spoke to him and if they did it was never of things so emotional or true. This was a very important moment in this man’s life.

When Henry was finished speaking the homeless man leaned into him and whispered “You have to look for a miracle, they are all around, and you just have to look for it to see it”

Miracles. Henry Donick did not believe in miracles and the sly smile on his face said as much.

The homeless man knew their moment had passed and Henry needed to be alone so he took his cart and pushed his way down the black tar path through the park. Henry watched him leave and then the depth of the man’s decency and concern seared its way into his mind and he called out “Sir!”

But the homeless man kept walking and so he called again, louder this time “Sir!”

This time the homeless man stopped and turned and looked at him.

“Thank you” Henry shouted and then added in a lower tone “Thank you for your kindness”.

Henry reached into his jacket pocket and took out his black leather wallet opened it and realized he had no cash. In that he respect, Henry was like the rest of the truly rich, he never carried cash.

“Thank you” the Homeless man waved back with a shout.

“For what?” Henry asked

“For calling me sir. Remember, look for the miracles” the man said with a strange, knowing smile. In fact, there seemed to be such knowledge in his smile that Henry was forced to ask “How will I know them when I see them?”

The man laughed. “Oh, you’ll know them, you’ll know them” and with that he turned and walked down the snow-covered sidewalk

“Wait!” Henry called out “What do you know?” but the man was gone, vanished into the whiteness of the snow that covered strawberry fields. Looking just past strawberry fields he could see his home, the Majestic, on West 72^ndStreet. He didn’t want to go home, not right now. He needed to talk to someone, to get an answer that would explain it all, someone that could give him a reason. He thought about it. He had no friends, not really. He was a man who had acquaintances, but not friends.

CHAPTER TWO

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.” Isaac Asimov.

Henry walked through the grand old buildings majestic arched main entrance, a porte cochère large enough to accommodate the horse-drawn carriages that once entered there. Although these magnificent entrances were largely lost in the city, the Majestic still retained hers and unlike so many properties in New York, the majestic had kept all of its original glory.

It was the last of its kind in Manhattan, a small apartment building, three floors and sixty-five units with four to twenty rooms, no two being alike. It was situated on a cozy, tree lined corner of West 72nd Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. Although the building had gone condo forty years before, most of the original tenants from Henry’s childhood still lived in there.

Henry Donick had lived there most of his adult life, in fact he had grown up only a few blocks away, the son Sam Donick, a corporate raider and a fifth generation New Yorker, and Mildred Donick, also a deeply entrenched New Yorker who could trace her ancestors back to the Knickerbocker Dutch.

After his father Sam Donick died and Henry was out on his own, living in a flat in Soho, Mildred Donick sold their brownstone and moved into The Majestic, to be close to her friend, Mrs. Edith Wheeling, also a widow. When his mother died, she left Henry her spacious 14 room apartment in the Majestic.

No room in the apartment was smaller than 40 feet long, with the longest, the main pallor, being 50 feet long. The ceilings were a magnificent 14 feet high, and the floors made of mahogany, oak, and cherry although Henry’s dining hall floor was distinct in that parts of the floor were inlaid with sterling silver.

The main parlors and master bedrooms boasted high gables, balustrades, and terracotta spandrels and fine hand carved panels and was located in the front of the apartment facing the park while the other twelve rooms overlooked the courtyard in the center of the building which was a patchwork of small gardens, one of which belonged to Henry, a croquet lawns, and a tennis court. All of the major rooms were connected to each other and were also accessible from a hall for servants.

Henry entered the Majestic’s large Victorian lobby and walked briskly passed a large group of elderly tenants who spent most of their day sitting in the big over stuffed leather chairs and couches that lined the wall. Most of them had knew Henry. They knew he was a solitary man of forty years, a loner who was content to watch the parade of humanity pass by his window. He had never married although there had been opportunities to take a wife, but it never happened.

In the silence of the elegantly designs elevator, he fumbled with his house keys as a way to a void looking at his reflection in the mirrors that lined each wall. When the lift opened its thick oak doors on the fourth floor, he felt a great sense of comfort and safety fall over him.

He unlocked his apartment door and let himself in. It was a large apartment with high ceiling that captured the sun on two sides. There was an expansive dining room done in crystal and white marble, a fine kitchen, several bedrooms, a drawing room, a main parlor and a sitting room.

The apartment also had a den, a cozy one where Henry had installed bookshelves on every wall so that the great works surrounded him at every turn and gave him a great sense of calm and safety. It was here that he plied his trade as editor-in-chief of Modern Curator Magazine, an annual publication he underwrote.

Although he was successful in his profession, finances had never been an issue for him. On his father’s side, he was a direct descendant of Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck, a lawyer and landowner in New York in the 1600’s when the city was called New Netherland. It was from van der Donck title that the city of Yonkers, New York, took its name. Later generations changed the name to Van Donick but that was changed with the event of World War One to the less distinguishable Donick.

Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck, in addition to being a leader in the political life of New Amsterdam was also the first lawyer to live in the United States and through his considerable connections within the powerful Dutch West India Company; he was able to buy up enormous tracks land on Manhattan, Brooklyn, Yonkers, and Long Island on credit

The original family estate, Colen Donck, was a massive 24,000-acre piece of property that ran along twelve miles of the Hudson River, then known as the North River, making up what would become the Bronx and southern Westchester County. The estate was so large that Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck came to be called Jonkheer, a title equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon title of Esquire. From van der Donck title, the city of Yonkers, New York, took its name.

As for the Bronx, took its name from another family member, Jonas Bronck, who had married into van der Donck clan and moved to what was then the wilds of the area of the Harlem River Randalls Island. There he built a 680-acre farm on what is today Bruckner Boulevard. In 1624, another relative established a settlement he called Vlacke Bos, which became Flatbush in an area the Dutch called Breukelen, or Brooklyn

Henry’s mother was a Van Rensalers and a very distant relative to his father. She was also, on her mother’s side, a direct descendant of Peter Minuit who had, in 1626, so famously bought Manhattan Island from the locals for 60 Dutch guilders, what was then about $24.

Mother’s more direct ancestor was Killiaen van Rensalers, a diamond merchant in Amsterdam and member of the board of directors of the West India Company. The family had earned its first great fortune in Jamaica, on their vast sugar plantation.

Killiaen van Rensalers purchased most of northern New Jersey and then sold it off at a considerable profit to become a merchant’s banker in Manhattan. He married the equally wealthy Margaret De Peyster, and the couple kept a mansion on what is now central Broadway as well as "Rose Hall" at Flatbush, Long Island NY.

Their son, Nicholas Bayard van Rensalers increased the family fortune through a series of fraudulent land grants and protection money from pirates in partnership with the notoriously corrupted Governor, Benjamin Fletcher.

His son, John van Rensalers, was a businessman who invested the family money into flourmills, wholesale merchandising, and shipbuilding. He would eventually become the first Colonial Mayor of New York City

John van Rensalers son was Frederick Philipse van Rensalers; a staunch loyalist during the war for Independence had the good sense to switch sides in mid-battle and as a result, avoided having his land and fortune taken from him. In 1785, Frederick Philipse van Rensalers daughter, Marie married Andrew van der Donck, who now used the family name Van der Donck and the vast fortunes were merged.

In the late 1850’s, some two hundred years after Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck had died, the van der Donck and Van Rensalers were still the largest land owners in New York City. But the value of land rents diminished and it was more profitable to sell the lands rather than keep them and in 1860, the families sold off all of their lands for $610,000.00 for a modern value of about $30,000,000.

As the generations of the van der Donck and Van Rensalers grew smaller, the family fortunes increased, trust funds grew, and now Henry Donick was the last of both lines. There were no brothers or sisters or cousins. Just Henry Donick. The extremely wealthy and well insulated Henry Donick.

CHAPTER THREE

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The Bible King James Version

Henry removed his tight leather shoes and his tie and replaced them with a pair of friendly, well-worn slippers and an equally worn cardigan and at exactly noon, he entered his den and soaked in its comfort while he stared out across Central Park and tried to make some sense out his dismal news.

It took him five hours to consider every angle of his predicament, but the bottom line was always the same, he was going to die in a few months and that was that. There was no one to share the story with, and that, he knew, was the sad legacy of his life that he was, despite all of his fortune and position, absolutely alone in this world. Of course he always knew he was lonely but he was comfortable with it, but this was different. This time it was a gnawing loneness because he was comfortable with it.

He had few friends, none of whom were close. He just wasn’t that sort of man, the sort that makes friends and keeps them through the years and confides in them. Still, it would be good to speak to someone about his pending death, anyone really. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and studied it while he searched for a name of one person he could talk too. And the name Monica Kloss entered his mind.

She worked as a private financial adviser at his bank and they had dined together several times in the past year, always discussing his fiscal matters but more and more recently, they had talked about other things. She liked to talk about other things and so it came to her naturally and while she spoke she had the most delightful habit of lowering her eyes, which, he had noted were intelligent eyes but also soft and light in their blue color. She twirled her blond hair in her fingers, he liked that.

She was 38 years old, never married. She lived in a one bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, only blocks from his apartment. She had goldfish but wanted a cat but she worked late hours and though it would be cruel to leave the poor thing alone for so long.

He was surprised at how much he remembered of what she had told him. She enjoyed reading, he knew about her, romance novels mostly. She enjoyed Beethoven and bluegrass and yard sales and when she drank too much wine her face went ever so slightly crimson in color. He was fairly positive she wasn’t involved with anyone. But he couldn’t call her, not about this, in fact, he thought not about anything, theirs was not that sort of relationship.

He sat up in his chair and whispered to himself “Come on old man, snap out of it” and reached into his desk drawer and removed a vile of mild sedatives that had been prescribed for him several years ago. He didn’t use them often but he kept them in the event of a crushing attack of self-imposed anxiety that he sometimes suffered from. He swallowed two of the pills and promptly fell asleep.

Waking from his nap two hours later, he was refreshed but kept his eyes closed until he was fully awake but then he caught the glimpse of his worries coming at him from a far corner of his mind and braced himself for the next attack. Then he heard his mother’s words “Keep your mind busy dear and all that is useless falls away”. He stood from the chair, the first time he had been on his feet since noon.

He would have to start by getting his affairs in order, his finances, legal matters, that sort of thing. He shook his head to dismiss the thought; he had people to do that sort of thing but then reconsidered since so much of whatever was stored in the house were personnel items. He should at least look at what was there.

He walked down the long, wide hallway to the spare bedroom that he had converted into archive. In it were rows of neatly stored boxes of his mother’s most cherished belonging, personnel papers and, he suspected, a fair amount of junk. He had never opened the boxes or examined the papers. He feared that one day all of his memories would be here one day, in dusty sealed boxes that no one would ever see and he thought that to be such an awful thing because memories should to be shared.

The first few boxes contained hand writer letters, in cursive and set in a rich dark ink. Some of them dated back almost two hundred years and appeared to be from various Van Rensalers and Donick mothers to their daughters. After that, the next several dozen rows of boxes were filled with reams and reams of legal papers detailing family holding back to the 1600’s. Then came the boxes of photographs, at least a thousand of them, capturing the usually unsmiling faces of his ancestors.

It was all enthralling to him, as a historian, every piece of paper, every document, and every photograph so that when he looked out the tall, brown draped window at the end of the room, he was surprised to see that night had fallen. He looked at his watch; it was 10:30 in the evening. He had no appetite for lunch and he had absentmindedly forgotten to have diner but he felt better, less lost and overwhelmed and decided he would finish perusing the last few boxes on the shelf and then treat himself to a late but luxurious diner.

He opened the next box and found it filled with women’s jewelry that was encrusted with diamonds, rupees, pearls and all of it trimmed in fine, rich gold. The next box was also filled with fine jewelry, men’s jewelry.

The next box was marked “explorations”. Inside were very old black and white photographs of exotic places with camels and ruins. There was also a long elegant colt 45 pistol, a fine leather holster and some ammunition. He guess the items belonged to one of his mother’s great-uncles, Hillyard Van Rensalers, a noted Middle East explorer in the early 1900s.

Under the weapons was an exquisite blue glass bottle, lavishly decorated with gold painted decorative patterns. With his considerable knowledge in antiquities, he judged the bottle to be 7^th or 8^th century and definitely Middle Eastern. He lifted it slowly from the box and admired its beauty and decided to take it to the kitchen to clean and perhaps place it in his den.

He stood in the center of the large roomy kitchen and realized he had absolutely no idea where any of the cleaning products were kept. He seldom entered the kitchen since it was the sole domain of Esmeralda, the Peruvian housekeeper-cook. He opened and closed a few cabinet doors and did a halfhearted search before deciding to leave the project to Esmeralda in the morning and gently placed the bottle on the kitchen counter.

The bottle had left his hands filled with dust and washed them in the sink and then took a wash towel, wet it in warm water and dabbed some of the dust from the bottles neck, revealing a splendid deep blue color he had missed before. He wet the cloth again and gently and slowly rubbed the bottle down from to top to bottom.

When he reached the base on the third stoke, the bottle started to shake violently and he immediately assumed that rodent of some kind had somehow made its way into the bottle but that couldn’t be, he noted, because the top was sealed with top.

Nonetheless, he stepped backwards from the bottle and as he did, its top blew off and flew across the voluminous kitchen. Suddenly a fantastic cloud of grey smoke lifted from inside the bottle and made its way a few feet across the room where it stood motionless for a minutes before the figure of a man appeared. He was tall, perhaps six feet, slim but muscular and wore a sky blue knee long cloak, pants, white silk shoes that came to a point and a turban.

“What are you? Who are you?” Henry asked as he took several steps backwards.

“I am Fakrash- El Aamash. I am of the sacred tribe of the Suret al-Jinn, in service to Sultan Zabibe of Qedar.” His voice was booming and deep. Then he leaned forward and asked in a hushed tone “He is here, the Sultan?”

“Not that I know of but it wouldn’t surprise me, you’re here after all” Henry answered. “How did you get in here?”

“Are we in the Kingdom of Qedar?” he asked looking around the room.

“No” Henry said, “This is New York. How did you get in here?”

“It is a very small place, New York,” the Jeanie said.

“This is a room in an apartment in the city of New York”, Henry answered “How did you get in here?”

“And in what Kingdom is New York?” the Jeanie asked

“The Kingdom of crazy” Henry said extending is open palms to the Jeanie. “What do you want? I don’t keep any cash in the apartment”

“I want nothing from you. You have freed me from my prison. “The man said and pointed to the bottle on the counter “I will now grant you one wish, anything you desire, anything at all”

“One wish?” Henry asked skeptically.

“One wish” the Jeanie answered dismissively.

“I think I’m supposed to get three” Henry said.

“No” the Jeanie answered in a voice that sounded nothing like the deep booming voice he had just used “You get one. I am not empowered to give you three”

“I’m pretty sure it’s three” Henry countered.

“Well” the Jeanie said with a tilt of his head, “You’re wrong. Now, what is your wish?”

“What happened to your voice” Henry asked

“Nothing” the Jenaie said defensively.

“Your voice changed”

“No it didn’t”

“Yes it did. A second ago you were talking in that deep voice the movie announcer uses when they show the previews and now your talking regluarly”

The Jeanie smiled sheepishly and shrugged “It’s really hard to talk in that deep voice for along time”

There was a brief silence between them and then Henry smiled.

“You know what you are?” Henry said pointing finger at the Jeanie.

“What am I?” Jeanie asked retuning Henry’s smile.

“You’re a figment of my imagination brought on by the stress of the illness.” Henry said “That’s all this is. I took a pill earlier and that’s what brought this about, the pills”

“Okay” said the Jeanie “That’ll work. Now if you would just make your wish, I’ll be on my way”

“That’s all this is, a figment of my imagination, drawn up under stress” Henry muttered

“You can have riches” the Jeanie counting off on his fingers “There’s beauty, talent, wisdom” he stopped and said as an aside “You don’t get many requests for wisdom”

“I realize you aren’t real” Henry said “But I have to ask, how do you know there aren’t many requests for wisdom for wisdom?”

“Well” the Jeanie said with a guilty expression “Let’s just say this isn’t my first time out of the bottle and leave it there”

“See?” Henry said to himself soothingly “A repeat offender Jeanie, there’s no such thing”

“How about power” the Jeanie said with a squint of his eye “Power is always a big hit, you want endless power?”

“I made this up” Henry said “Invented this to keep my mind off of my problems”

“All righty then” said the Jeanie clasping his hands together “You need a minute right? I understand completely, take your time” and left the kitchen.

“My figment just walked out of the room” Henry said and followed the Jeanie into the main pallor.

“You have no harem?” the Jeanie asked.

“Yes but they‘re off on Mondays” Henry said as the Jeanie sprawled across the couch.

“Make yourself comfortable, don’t be shy” Henry said

The Jeanie looked around the room with narrowed eyes “And your servants?”

“Esmeralda” Henry answered. “She doesn’t work nights. She barely works days actually”

“I have arrived in the house of a peasant” the Jeanie said dismissively and then turned to Henry and smiled “So be it! But with you wish, all of that will change perhaps, have you given it anymore thought?”

“No I haven’t “Henry said “I’ve been sidetracked, what with a talking, judgmental figment of my imagination strolling around, I’m sure you understand”

“I hardly think I was being judgmental” the Jeanie said obviously displeased.

“I have a splendid idea” Henry said.

“I just have a few observations” the Jeanie said and then looking around the apartment “Astute observations I might add”

“Why don’t you leave?” Henry smiled and started to walk towards the apartment door “And I’ll get back to you later on that whole wish thing, doesn’t that sound peachy?”

“You know” the Jeanie said making his way into the den “I’d love to, I really would, I mean it’s not that you’re not just great company and all, but I have to stay”

“Why?” Henry asked

“It’s a genie thing” the Jeanie said with an exaggerated shrug “I have to stay within the reasonable confines of your home until you make your wish”

“And what would happen if you left my home without my making a wish?” Henry asked.

“Well that’s the thing of it” the Jeanie replied “I mean literately can’t leave your home. The powers won’t allow. I’m trapped here”

“You seem to get trapped a lot” Henry said.

“I know! Right?” the Jeanie laughed

Henry rolled his head backwards in thought and said “You know how we can solve this?” and he picked up his cell phone and pushed a speed dial number and waited for a few second. When it was answered, he said “Mr. Ozturk, Henry Donick, 4-a, would you be kind enough to come up here for a moment?”

He waited for the reply and said “Yes, I know it’s late. It will just take a moment.”

After a few seconds, he said “Thank you Mister Ozturk” and hung up the phone. Turning to Jeanie, he said “Demir Ozturk, building supervisor. He’s on his way up”

The Jeanie shrugged in boredom.

“So” Henry said “you say you are from Qudar, you say?”

“Yes, Qedar” the Jeanie replied

“Why don’t we take a look at that?” Henry offered and walked to his desk and typed the words “Kingdom of Qedar” into his computer. After several seconds, he leaned into the screen, he read aloud “Kingdom of Qedar. Circa 8th century BCE. The Qedarite were the most organized of the Northern Arabian tribes, at the height of their rule in the 6th century BCE; the Kingdom of Qedar spanned a large area between the Persian Gulf and the Sinai. An influential force between the 8th and 4th centuries BCE, Qedarite monarchs were eventually subsumed into the Nabataean state after their rise to prominence in the 2nd century CE.”

“The Nabataean” the Jeanie said in low awe.

“You know of them?” Henry asked.

“No” the Jeanie said in equal awe.

“Then why……” Henry began to ask and then thought better of it.

“You are a Sultan?” Jeanie asked.

“No” Henry answered “I’m a publisher. How long have you been in the bottle?”

The Jeanie rolled his eyes upwards, used his fingers to calculate, muttered numbers and said “I have no idea”

“Who put you in the bottle?” Henry asked

“The great and glorious Sultan Zabibe” the Jeanie replied

“Why?” Henry asked “What did you do?”

“Some said that perhaps I had slept with the wife of the Sultan” the Jeanie replied looking around the room and trying to avoid Henry’s gaze.

“And who” Henry asked already knowing the answer “Were the some who said that?”

“The wife of the Sultan” the Jeanie whispered “She was a very vindictive woman”

“You slept with the guy’s wife?” Henry asked

“He had many wives” the Jeanie responded.

“You slept with the guy’s wife?” Henry asked again

“He had 150 wives” the Jeanie said “He was a very selfish man”

“You slept with the guy’s wife” Henry said flatly

“You make it sound” the Jeanie said and then searched for a perfect word to weasel his way out of the dilemma he was in

“Underhanded” Henry asked. “Slimy?”

“Well” said the Jeanie slightly offended “When you put it that way.”

“So he put you a bottle?” Henry asked

“Yes” the Jeanie said lowering his head.

“Seems a bit harsh” Henry said.

“I agree!” the Jeanie said, “Especially when he did nothing at all the first ten times I was caught”

“How does one go about putting a grown man, a large grown man such as yourself in a bottle?” Henry asked.

“Ancient ritual” the Jeanie answered “If you know the ritual, it isn’t all that difficult”

“Of course” Henry said.

There was an exceedingly loud knock on the door. Henry knew the knock. It was Demir Ozturk, the buildings perpetually displeased and exasperated supervisor. Ozturk purposely slammed each door with his ham fists as a way to intimidate and it tended to work especially on the elderly tenants. For years the condominium board had contemplating firing him because of his obnoxious ways, but for some reason, Ozturk outlasted them and survived another year at the Majestic.

“Now” Henry said with a knowing smile, “Now we’ll get to the bottom of this”.

He walked to the door and opened it “Please come in Mister Ozturk”

“You know what time it is, Donick” Ozturk sneered “It’s ten PM!”

“Silence knave!” Jeanie yelled with a wave of his hand.

“What did you call me?” Ozturk roared and moved several feet towards Jeanie but Henry stood in his path.

“So you see him?” Henry asked Ozturk.

“Who?” Ozturk asked “See who?”

“You tell me” Henry said with a sly smile.

Ozturk pushed him aside and stuck a thick, hairy finger into Jeanie chest “You call me a knave again, clown and I’ll flatten you”

“So you do see him?” Henry asked.

“Clown?” asked Jeanie indignantly.

“Yeah” Ozturk said looking over Jeanie’s attire “Clown”

“Mr. Ozturk” Henry interrupted “Do me a favor, please”

“Depends” Ozturk said without turning to face him “What is it?”

“Pinch that fellow would you?” Henry asked “I want to make sure he’s real”

“What?” Ozturk and Jeanie asked at the same time.

“Pinch him” Henry said “Or slap him if you prefer, I just need you to touch him”

Ozturk turned his considerable girth on Henry and pointed a finger in his face and said

“Look Donick, I always figured you were some kind of weirdo-sex pervert guy, but I’ll tell you now I’m not, you got that? So don’t try to get me involved in your sad and masks sex”

“Sadomasochistic?” Henry asked in his deadpan fashion

“No, not that either!” Ozturk yelled “I don’t do none of that weird stuff you got that? I’m no homo sap e in”

Ozturk stormed to the door, opened it and gave them both one last, long disgusted stare and then slammed the door behind him.

“Why did you do that?” Jeanie asked but Henry turned and walked into the dining room, and called the police.

“911 what is you emergency?” the voice on the bored other end of the one droned.

“There’s a loon in my apartment 807 West 72^st street 4-a” Henry said frantically

“By a loon sir, are you referring to the large bird or do you mean loon as in loony-tune crazy person” the voice asked.

“Are you serious?” Henry asked “Why would I have giant bird in my apartment?”

“It’s New York.” The voice answered tiredly “You got a giant bird, I send a guy with a large net, you got a loony-tune crazy person, and I send a guy with a much larger net”

“I’ve got a loony-tune crazy person in my apartment” Henry said.

“I’ll have car there in a few minutes” the dispatcher said before he hung up.

By then the Jeanie had entered the room. Henry closed his phone and gave him an uneasy smile.

“Would care for a glass of something?” Henry asked

“Of what?” the Jeanie.

“Well anything, you like, really” Henry answered

“It’s just that you made it sound like you had one specific thing in mind” Jeanie pressed.

“How did you come to that conclusion?” Henry asked

“Well you said ‘glass of something’ I though, you know, what the something was, but you weren’t going to tell me until it got here, because you were afraid that if I knew what it was I wouldn’t want it” the Jeanie said.

“Well” Henry began and realized he had absolutely no answer for what the man had just said. Instead he said “Well, I suppose you’re famished, what with not having eaten in four thousand years”

“Sure” the Jeanie replied “I could use a little something”

“What would you like?” Henry asked walking towards the kitchen with the Jeanie following him.

“Some Kibbeh would be good, perhaps a Gauss” Jeanie said.

“Peanut butter and jelly?” Henry replied “No problem”

“No, no, no, “said the Jeanie “Kibbeh or Gauss”

Henry stopped and turned to look at the Jeanie and said “You know, we’re fresh out of Kibbeh or Gauss”

“What a shame” said the Jeanie.

“I know, right?” said Henry and went about the business of building the Jeanie sandwich.

When the Jeanie was half way through his sandwich, the awkward silence that was broken by a heavy knock on the door.

“Who is it?” Henry called across the room.

“New York City Police Department, answering complain call”

Henry opened the apartment door and showed in two burly cops. One was slightly older than the other.

“I’m Henry Donick, I called” Henry announced. “That was fast”

“Yeah, we were parked out front. We spoke to your building super down in the lobby. The older cop said.

“Mister Ozturk” Henry said.

Mister Unhappy Turk is more like it” the other cop said “He says you kiddies wanted him to play”

“What can we do for you today, Mister Donick?” the older cop said wearily.

“Well” Henry said “This man claims to be a Jeanie”

“Well that’s nice” the cop said. “What can we do for you today, Mister Donick?”

Henry was momentarily dumbfounded.

“Well, I just think that” he stumbled and then paused “You don’t find that unusual?”

“I been a New York City beat cop for twenty three Mister Donick” the policeman said “You’re gonna have to do better than a guy who thinks he’s a Jeanie”

“There’s three guys over on 48^th Street who say their God” the other cop added “They throw invisible lightening at each other all day”

“That’s actually more entertaining than unusual” the older cop rejoined.

“Yeah” the young cop said “You’re right”

“So did you get your three wishes from the Jeanie or what?” the older cop asked Henry.

“It’s one wish” Henry said.

“It’s one wish” the Jeanie said.

“No, I think its three” the older cop said and then turned to the younger cops and asked “its three, right?”

“I’ll have to check the Jeanie Handbook when I get back down to the patrol car” the young cop answered “But, yeah I think it’s three”

“Look” Henry said “Let’s get back to the point, this man is a Jeanie”

“Of course he is” the cop said with a soothing smile.

“I’m not some kind of a nut, he is a Jeanie, a real Jeanie” Henry said.

“And how do you know he’s a Jeanie sir?” the young cop asked.

“Because I rubbed that bottle and he came out of it in this, well, puff of smoke” Henry said.

“And” the older cop said “You asked him for your three wishes”

“I didn’t ask him” Henry said

“Well, you did actually” Jeanie said “You brought it up. Remember? You asked about your three wishes and I said, no there’s just one and …”

“This is a really a case for the Jeanie squad” the older cop said

“Now hold on, Bill,” the young cop rejoined “Since this involves a wishes dispute, it could be a case for the Tooth Fairy squad”

“You’re right” the older cop said cautiously “We don’t want to get on the wrong side of those Tooth Fairy goons, they play rough”

“All right” Henry said “Have your fun, but I think that you should at least file a report of something”

“Your right” the older cop said taking out a pad and pen “Alice and the Mad Hatter will want a complete run down on this”

“You got any ID on you pal?” The younger cop asked Jeanie.

“No” he answered

“Where do you live?” the cop asked

“Here” Jeanie said.

“How long you lived here?” the older cop asked

“At three thousand years, maybe longer” the Jeanie replied.

“Are you a foreign national sir?” the cop asked

“I am of the Kingdom of Qedar” Jeanie answered proudly.

“Can I talk to you out in the hall?” the older cop asked and then Henry followed him out to the hallway where the cop leaned in closely and said in a low voice “Are you in an abusive relationship with Jeanie?”

“What?” Henry squawked “No! No, for God’s sakes, we’re not involved”

“Hey” the cop said holding up a finger “You don’t have to be sexually caught up with a guy for the relationship to become abusive”

“We’re not Gay” Henry said “Well I’m not Gay, I can’t speak for him. I don’t know if they have Gay Jeanie’s”

“Yeah” the younger cop replied thoughtfully “I should think they would. Look, if you want, I can make him leave for the night, have the folks down at Bellevue check him”

“No” Henry said shaking his head. No one deserved a night in the Bellevue mental ward. “He can stay here”

The older cop called for his partner to join him and as they walked towards the elevator he shouted to Henry over his shoulder “Play nice, kids”

Henry walked back into his apartment and said to Jeanie “Well, it appears that you are real. Either that or the whole of New York is insane, both are real possibilities”

“Your name is Henry?” the Jeanie asked.

The question surprised Henry and he realized he had not introduced himself “Yes” he said with a nod “I’m Henry Donick and this is where I live”. He sighed heavily “It’s been a long day; long day and I’ll have to deal with this tomorrow. You can take a guests bedroom, if you like. I’ll show you”

They walked down the long hallway to the bedroom, the last room in the house “There’s your bath” Henry said flicking on the light to the toilet “and here is your porch” and opened the veranda doors to a small balcony that looked over the 72 street. Stepping back into the room he pointed to a small alcove and said “You’re dressing area, bed and TV”

“What is a TV?” Jeanie asked.

It took Henry a while to answer because he pondered whether he should answer. He was still convinced he was talking to a figment of his imagination that was somehow visible to others. Instead of answering, he took the remote, turned on the set and floated across the channels. He handed the remote to Jeanie and before leaving the room, he said “There are pajamas in the closet somewhere” and then left and closed the door behind him.

As he walked down the long, nearly sound proof hallway, Henry worried that he wouldn’t be able to sleep and stopped by his desk and took two sedatives “If one makes me see Jeanie’s” he thought “Two should put me to sleep”. And they did, several minutes after his head hit the pillow, he was sound asleep.

Different takes on Abbey Road

2026-10-31T10:34:06.121-07:00

Please support this site, buy a book!

2026-10-29T07:38:12.527-07:00

Buy it on Amazon

Short, funny play about children of the Sixties

2026-10-29T07:31:55.976-07:00

Buy it at Amazon

Please support this Page!

2026-10-29T07:29:46.810-07:00

Buy it Amazon

The space race

2026-09-20T06:38:43.151-07:00

2026-09-16T05:16:46.929-07:00

Talk about a lineup!

2026-09-05T07:39:16.589-07:00

The FBI and Aretha Franklin,

2026-08-26T08:31:37.874-07:00

Aretha Franklin, a memo found in an file from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) dated April 8, 1968 reveals that the Federal Bureau of Investigation monitored the giant of soul & gospel music for years, collecting intelligence from sources on her involvement in the civil rights movement & what it suspected were her links to Black Panthers, Communists & those it deemed “Black extremists.”

Research suggests the generation that grew up in the 1960s and 70s wasn't hardened by trauma so much as tempered by ordinary difficulty — the kind of low-level, unmanaged adversity that modern safety culture has almost completely removed from childhood When children encounter everyday scrapes and tumbles, they build resilience that safety-obsessed parenting may inadvertently undermine. My uncle fell out of a mango tree at nine and broke his arm in two places. Nobody sued the tree. There was no incident report, no family meeting, no follow-up email. He got a cast, a scolding, and a month later he was back up the same tree, only better at it. I thought about that last week when a friend sent me a photo of her son’s new school playground here in Bangkok. Rubber flooring. Every corner rounded. A climbing frame roughly the height of a kitchen counter. It looked less like a playground than a very expensive apology. And she wasn’t wrong to want it. That’s the part that makes this worth writing about. Some difficulty beats none The usual story about the generation raised in the sixties and seventies is that they were hardened by hardship. I don’t think that’s quite it. The more interesting claim is that they were tempered by ordinary difficulty, the low-grade, unmanaged, nobody-is-coming kind. There’s research pointing this way. A large longitudinal study by Mark Seery and colleagues at Buffalo and UC Irvine tracked a national sample over several years and found something counterintuitive: people who had lived through a moderate amount of lifetime adversity reported better mental health than people with a lot of it. Fair enough. But they also reported better mental health than people with none at all. The shape of the finding is a U. Too much difficulty flattens you. None at all leaves you untested. The middle is where people seemed to build something. Seery was careful about this, and I will be too. It’s correlational. You cannot randomly assign people terrible childhoods to check. But he made a point I keep coming back to: they studied major adversity, and there’s reason to think smaller, more mundane experiences do similar work. What actually disappeared Here’s where it gets concrete. In 1971, researchers in England found that around 80 per cent of seven and eight year olds were allowed to get to school on their own. By 1990, in the follow-up study by Mayer Hillman and his colleagues, that figure had collapsed to 9 per cent. Nine per cent. Inside twenty years. That’s not a story about trauma. Walking to school is not a hardship. It’s a story about a thousand tiny problems that used to be a child’s to solve. Which route. What to do when it rains. How to handle the older kid who wants your lunch money. Whether to say something or keep walking. Peter Gray, a psychologist at Boston College, has spent years arguing that the decline in free, unsupervised play tracks the rise in anxiety and depression among young people over the same decades. His stronger claim is about something called locus of control, which is a clunky term for a simple idea: do you believe your life is mostly steered by you, or mostly by forces outside you? Over the second half of the twentieth century, young people’s answers drifted steadily towards the second one. Gray’s argument is that you cannot develop a sense that you can handle things without ever being left to handle things. I am not romanticising 1974 Let me be honest about the other side, because the nostalgic version of this argument is rubbish. The seventies also had no seatbelts, lead in the petrol, casual violence in schools, and a culture that told children with genuinely awful home lives to get on with it. A lot of what we now call safety culture is straightforwardly good. Fewer children die. That is not a trade-off, it’s a win. The trouble is that we removed two things at once. We removed the genuine dangers, which was correct, and we removed the ordinary friction, which came along for the ride. Those are different problems and we solved them with the same tool. I grew up in Manila in the nineties, which was somewhere in the middle of this shift. I was later sent to boarding school in Australia, which I don’t recommend as a parenting strategy but which did teach me, at thirteen, that if I forgot my kit nobody was going to drive it over. Small thing. Stuck, though. Risk and danger are not the same word This is the distinction that unlocks the whole thing for me. Danger is a hazard the child cannot see or assess. A broken bottle in the sandpit. A gap in a fence near a road. You remove those, always, without debate. Risk is something the child can see, weigh up, and choose. Climbing higher. Going further. Handling a tool that could pinch. A systematic review led by Mariana Brussoni at the University of British Columbia looked at twenty-one studies on risky outdoor play and found broadly positive effects on physical activity, social behaviour and, notably, no clear evidence that it produced more injuries. Kids are surprisingly decent risk assessors when they’re given anything to practise on.

2026-08-23T11:07:18.681-07:00

Research suggests the generation that grew up in the 1960s and 70s wasn't hardened by trauma so much as tempered by ordinary difficulty — the kind of low-level, unmanaged adversity that modern safety culture has almost completely removed from childhood

When children encounter everyday scrapes and tumbles, they build resilience that safety-obsessed parenting may inadvertently undermine.

My uncle fell out of a mango tree at nine and broke his arm in two places. Nobody sued the tree. There was no incident report, no family meeting, no follow-up email. He got a cast, a scolding, and a month later he was back up the same tree, only better at it.

I thought about that last week when a friend sent me a photo of her son’s new school playground here in Bangkok. Rubber flooring. Every corner rounded. A climbing frame roughly the height of a kitchen counter. It looked less like a playground than a very expensive apology.

And she wasn’t wrong to want it. That’s the part that makes this worth writing about.

Some difficulty beats none

The usual story about the generation raised in the sixties and seventies is that they were hardened by hardship. I don’t think that’s quite it. The more interesting claim is that they were tempered by ordinary difficulty, the low-grade, unmanaged, nobody-is-coming kind.

There’s research pointing this way. A large longitudinal study by Mark Seery and colleagues at Buffalo and UC Irvine tracked a national sample over several years and found something counterintuitive: people who had lived through a moderate amount of lifetime adversity reported better mental health than people with a lot of it. Fair enough. But they also reported better mental health than people with none at all.

The shape of the finding is a U. Too much difficulty flattens you. None at all leaves you untested. The middle is where people seemed to build something.

Seery was careful about this, and I will be too. It’s correlational. You cannot randomly assign people terrible childhoods to check. But he made a point I keep coming back to: they studied major adversity, and there’s reason to think smaller, more mundane experiences do similar work.

What actually disappeared

Here’s where it gets concrete. In 1971, researchers in England found that around 80 per cent of seven and eight year olds were allowed to get to school on their own. By 1990, in the follow-up study by Mayer Hillman and his colleagues, that figure had collapsed to 9 per cent.

Nine per cent. Inside twenty years.

That’s not a story about trauma. Walking to school is not a hardship. It’s a story about a thousand tiny problems that used to be a child’s to solve. Which route. What to do when it rains. How to handle the older kid who wants your lunch money. Whether to say something or keep walking.

Peter Gray, a psychologist at Boston College, has spent years arguing that the decline in free, unsupervised play tracks the rise in anxiety and depression among young people over the same decades. His stronger claim is about something called locus of control, which is a clunky term for a simple idea: do you believe your life is mostly steered by you, or mostly by forces outside you? Over the second half of the twentieth century, young people’s answers drifted steadily towards the second one.

Gray’s argument is that you cannot develop a sense that you can handle things without ever being left to handle things.

I am not romanticising 1974

Let me be honest about the other side, because the nostalgic version of this argument is rubbish.

The seventies also had no seatbelts, lead in the petrol, casual violence in schools, and a culture that told children with genuinely awful home lives to get on with it. A lot of what we now call safety culture is straightforwardly good. Fewer children die. That is not a trade-off, it’s a win.

The trouble is that we removed two things at once. We removed the genuine dangers, which was correct, and we removed the ordinary friction, which came along for the ride. Those are different problems and we solved them with the same tool.

I grew up in Manila in the nineties, which was somewhere in the middle of this shift. I was later sent to boarding school in Australia, which I don’t recommend as a parenting strategy but which did teach me, at thirteen, that if I forgot my kit nobody was going to drive it over. Small thing. Stuck, though.

Risk and danger are not the same word

This is the distinction that unlocks the whole thing for me.

Danger is a hazard the child cannot see or assess. A broken bottle in the sandpit. A gap in a fence near a road. You remove those, always, without debate.

Risk is something the child can see, weigh up, and choose. Climbing higher. Going further. Handling a tool that could pinch. A systematic review led by Mariana Brussoni at the University of British Columbia looked at twenty-one studies on risky outdoor play and found broadly positive effects on physical activity, social behaviour and, notably, no clear evidence that it produced more injuries.

Kids are surprisingly decent risk assessors when they’re given anything to practise on.

— the kind of low-level, unmanaged adversity that modern safety culture has almost completely removed from childhood

When children encounter everyday scrapes and tumbles, they build resilience that safety-obsessed parenting may inadvertently undermine.

And she wasn’t wrong to want it. That’s the part that makes this worth writing about.

Some difficulty beats none

The shape of the finding is a U. Too much difficulty flattens you. None at all leaves you untested. The middle is where people seemed to build something.

What actually disappeared

Nine per cent. Inside twenty years.

Gray’s argument is that you cannot develop a sense that you can handle things without ever being left to handle things.

I am not romanticising 1974

Let me be honest about the other side, because the nostalgic version of this argument is rubbish.

Risk and danger are not the same word

This is the distinction that unlocks the whole thing for me.

Danger is a hazard the child cannot see or assess. A broken bottle in the sandpit. A gap in a fence near a road. You remove those, always, without debate.

Kids are surprisingly decent risk assessors when they’re given anything to practise on.

This was the best thing you could do as a child in the 60s

2026-07-14T08:46:45.960-07:00

Kennedy V Nixon

2026-07-14T08:42:57.398-07:00

When we first saw color on TV we were amazed, just amazed

2026-07-14T08:41:53.700-07:00