Some rich kids are missing out on life

The statistics are clear — kids who live in poverty, especially abject poverty, are more likely to struggle in school, to have health problems and all sorts of other issues we'd rather they not experience.

I've been to extremely poor villages in Africa and Central America and poverty-stricken U.S. neighborhoods from Columbus, Ga., to Atlantic City, N.J. to Gary, Ind., and a whole lot of points in between. The odds are against those kids who grow up in inadequate shacks or huts.

Still, the younger kids even in the poorest places find happiness in the smallest of things. An empty bicycle tire and a stick can provide hours of entertainment for a boy running around barefoot along trash-strewn dirt paths. A doll or a foam ball from the Everything's-A-Buck Store might as well be a gold bar to these kids.

I didn't grow up as poor as these kids, but we weren't exactly rich, either. I'd like to think we were middle class folks, but I suspect a closer examination would classify us as lower middle class.

But I also grew up happy. I didn't get the latest gadgets as quickly as my friends did, and I was still wearing Traxx sneakers when others were getting those new shoes with the coveted swoosh on the side. But I had plenty.

I had a bicycle that was a motorcycle in my imagination. I had a dirt path in the backyard that was a highway. The woods on the other side of the kudzu patch was an undiscovered island. I had a tire swing, a slightly-too-high basketball goal with a rickety wooden backboard and a used trampoline. I had it all.

Since kids today have become glued to smartphones, tablets, video games and YouTube videos, I've felt sorry for them. Sure, they're able to ask Siri and get the answer to something in seconds, while I had to spend a few minutes digging through the World Book encyclopedia, but they're missing much more than they're gaining through all their newfangled technology.

I was reminded of what these tech-addicted kids are missing when we moved into a rental property in a middle-class neighborhood a couple weeks ago while waiting for our new home to be constructed. Our street runs from upper middle class on one end to lower middle class on the other. We're toward the lower middle class end.

It's a decent little home with two bedrooms and one bath. But there's something strange happening on this end of the street. Kids spend time outside — yes, right out there in the fresh air. Jumping on trampolines. Riding bikes. Throwing baseballs. Playing hide and seek. These kids are all over the place around here doing crazy stuff like that.

Now, I'm sure there are some filthy rich kids who spend even more time tromping through the woods and playing backyard football than I did. And I'm sure there are poor kids wasting their days in front of a computer or phone screen. But I believe they are the exceptions to the rule.

Certainly, kids in abject poverty would look at the kids on my street and think they have it all. And the rich kids might look at them and think they have nothing. The truth, as usual, probably lies somewhere in between.

Whatever that truth might be, though, the sounds of kids playing outside sure is more reassuring than electronic sounds.

Visit Chris Johnson's website at kudzukid.com.

This story was originally published March 20, 2016 at 10:33 PM with the headline "Some rich kids are missing out on life."