Some of us were fortunate to grow up in a time when the lives of children weren’t so over-organized. Children nowadays, and their parents, can easily get caught up in frenetic dashes from one practice, to another rehearsal, to a game, to a performance, to a … well, you know, especially if you’re a parent or grandparent.

For families with more than one child, this turns their lives into an almost-never-ending swirl of organized activity. It can be expensive, too.

Sports, in particular, has evolved into an “opiate for the masses” in our country, from barely coordinated wee ones all the way into the professional ranks.

Talk about long seasons, some never seem to end. Just about everyone goes into playoffs, and the pros have lengthy preseason games as well.

The college-football bowl season is ludicrous. This time around, there were 34 bowl games in the top tier of schools. That’s 68 teams, mind you. Fourteen of those teams did not have winning records (they were all 6-6). The names given some of these bowls are equally ridiculous.

The most egregious excess might be in some of the organized youth leagues. Not only do they have regular season, playoff and all-star games, some have off-season seasons. One long season isn’t enough, so they do it again in the off season. Plus, there are “travel teams.” Add in school-night practices and you have athletics run amuck. What can they be thinking about? These are children, for heaven’s sake.

Now, I know this will sound like maudlin nostalgia on my part, but the pickup games we played when my buddies and I were just lads make up some of my sweetest memories. We would play and play and play. No coaches, no uniforms; and we loved it. We truly loved it. Wouldn’t trade those times, and memories, for a million dollars.

It’s all different now, and the scribblings of some fellow in a hometown paper certainly aren’t going to cause a single soul to rethink such over-emphasis.

But … sure wish Grampa could get up to Connecticut more often to see Zach, Lindsay and Emily during some of their myriad activities!

Over-organized though they may be.