“Can you come out and play?” …words that still bring a huge smile to my face. If the question came in the morning, we could build a fort and use it in 20 different ways throughout the day. If it was in the afternoon, we’d ride our bikes and hope the call for dinner came a little later that evening. And then there was the night time…the thought of a Ghost in the Graveyard marathon still puts chills down my spine.  Yelling “Midnight,” heading out into the dark, and then hoping I’d be able to run fast enough and make it back to home base before the “ghost” – usually an older neighborhood kid – could catch me! Oh, the things that ran through my mind…fear, excitement…FUN!

For most of the kids in the world today, the long days of unsupervised play are gone, and that makes me sad. Some of it has to do with the fears we have due to all the bad news we hear – all those terrible things that happened to others could possibly happen to us. But I have to believe a big part of it is because we’ve over stimulated ourselves – and our kids – with the overabundance of prepackaged content that comes with advances in technology. You really no longer have to have a conversation…you just send a text. You really don’t have to have a play date…you just “social network.” That’s all good…when it’s appropriate and in moderation. Heck, I love a good day of gaming from time to time, and I’ll be the first to send a text message when I’m trying to find a friend in a crowded restaurant. But when I was a kid and I was outside playing with my friends, I not only learned how to cooperate while competing and to compete while cooperating, I learned how to communicate, to lose, to win, to imagine, and even more, I was moving my body – without it feeling like exercise (can you believe kids actually “go to the gym” now? What?). And it was just so much fun.

That is why we are building Planet Fassa, a company that uses technology to encourage kids to play, move, learn and have fun like we all did – in the very different world we live in today. Don’t get me wrong. Technology ROCKS. I’m blogging this, for goodness sakes! But, at Planet Fassa, we’ve come up with a way to use it differently…to inspire that good ole’ “come out and play” feeling! Do you remember it?