The Motor Car And The War Against The Young

From my humble fourteenth century point of view, two of the the most astonishing things about your twentieth century existence (to call it a life, you would have to live a bit first), are the motor car and your enmity towards the young.
Children, as you call them, are prohibited from so doing so much, incarcerated as they are most of the day in their day prisons.They are not even allowed to work. No wonder they feel so unnecessary!
When I were a lad, if we weren't doing a few chores for our mam, we were outside playing. Playing out was the greatest treat of all. When you're little the world is so full of marvels. All the boys and girls played out, though it is true that the girls liked to stay at home closer to their mothers, helping with the sowing and the cooking and combing their hair and playing with their rag dolls.
These days it is almost heretical to say that little girls actually like being - well - girls, that really they prefer dancing to playing rugby (me too), but that is another matter.
It is the motor car that has really killed childhood. Kids don't even walk to day prison. They are taken everywhere by the motor car. And if they decide to walk or to play out, the motor car will come and mow them down.
Of course, cars are useful, but just think of the expense! Not only is there the initial cost of buying the damned thing, then there is the tax, the insurance, the maintenance.
It sets us 'free', the motor car. If, on a whim, we decide to travel fifty miles we can do so. Everywhere is near, yet what was once near is now nowhere to be seen. In the streets where people once walked and talked and the children played there is now a desert. Children stay indoors, confined to their home like a Moslem woman. They cannot simply walk down the street to meet their friends. Old people, as they begin to lose the plot, are in great danger. They too are imprisoned for their own safety.
If modern children do not grow up to be drug addled psychopaths it is truly amazing. Once upon a time the child would wonder and roam, exploring the fields and the ponds, the highways and the byways. The childhood of the past was a world of wonders. Modern childhood is a drab existence where little limbs and lungs are rarely exercised, confined to the four walls of the bedroom, the screen of the computer or the television.
Playing out is replaced by some supervised activity, organised, regimented by some depressing grown up.
What a joy it was back then to play out! To play out all day and to come back covered in bruises and scratches. What adventures we had back then in those primitive times!
But you who prefer things to freedom, have put an end to all that.