It’s become cliché… you know, because everybody says it. But it happens to be true in my case. When I was a kid I’d leave the house on summer mornings, and not return until I was hungry. That sometimes meant lunch, but it was usually dinner. So, I’d be out wandering around for hours and hours, getting into all manner of nonsense. And, as far as I could tell… nobody gave it a second thought.
Today, of course, parents believe their kids are going to be yanked into a waiting murder-van as soon as they leave their line of sight. Playtime is mostly organized and chaperoned, and probably not super-memorable. They all have anxiety and are fragile little snowflakes…
Yes, I can almost guarantee that the way we grew up was WAY more fun, and probably more healthy. But, holy shit. I can’t even imagine such a thing. I try not to smother my kids, but I want to have a general idea where they are, and who they’re with. Ya know? And their phones better be charged, goddammit. Literally no adult knew where I was, or how to reach me, during daylight hours when school was out of session.
And if you think bad shit didn’t happen back then, you’re fooling yourself. Heck, a girl from my class was abducted and murdered when I was in fifth grade. And the day after they found her body… Steve and I were out there again walking the ten blocks to school, or whatever it was. I mean, what are the chances of them killing ANOTHER kid, right? Don’t forget your lunchbox!
Years later a boy from our high school disappeared and they never figured out what happened to him. He was just gone. Forever. That’s not comforting.
Also, we used to get into some seriously dangerous stuff. A herd of semi-feral kids can come up with any number of questionable schemes that might lead to what was once called death by misadventure. We used to set fires… jump off the roofs of houses… ride our bikes down long dirt paths that were almost literally on a 45-degree angle… Just a dusting of parental involvement probably wouldn’t have been the worst thing.
On the other hand, I had a great time and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m sure I also learned to deal with a lot of things kids nowadays aren’t equipped to handle. The quivering little pusslets… Our way was the better way, right? Wonder why we weren’t able to relinquish the same amount of control our parents did? Heck, I’m as guilty as anyone. How much of it has to do with Oprah, 20/20, and Nancy Grace?
Please help me understand this. Use the comments link below, or above. Wherever it is.
Also, what shenanigans did you get into that would surely cause modern-day parents to collapse in a heap of despondency and horror? What were you allowed to do that simply wouldn’t fly in 2016? Tell us all about it.
And I’m going to call it a day, my friends.
I’ll see you guys again soon.
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First? When I was 12 or so they were building a new neighbourhood behind ours. We would steal wood, hammers and nails and make our own treehouses , bike ramps , etc. Sometimes getting into it with kids from another neighbourhood. It was all great fun and I would not trade it for anything!
We did that sort of thing now and then, even when I was in college. That particular source of building materials was referred to as “Midnight Construction Supply.”
Agreed! Everything said here is as straight and true as a good hit of horseradish on a ham dinner.
First!
We try and give our kids as much slack as we can.
My kids walk to and from elementary school unsupervised as part of a small herd. He oldest can bike or walk to friends houses without supervision. The younger two aren’t old enough for independence yet, but we’ll try and give them as much freedom as we can.
My wife and I feel there’s value in a philosophy of “benign neglect”.
That said, we do make sure they eat, do their homework and go to bed early. We also cart them to soccer, gymnastics, swim lessons and all the rest.
I’d prefer if they learned and played sports in the street or the field behind the neighbors house but there are so few free range kids out there that it’s impossible to get any kind of pick up game going. And mores the pity.
I think a certain percentage of kids are ‘pampered’ in every generation, and a certain percentage allowed to blow with the wind. When I was young (40+ years ago), there were always certain kids that – at least half the time – weren’t “allowed to come and play”. They were lousy at sports or wouldn’t dirty their clothes because they NEVER played; never chanced anything.
As for today’s kids – I don’t think they anyone is hovering over them excessively, although some would like to (and the media would have you believe you NEED to). With both parents working, kids are alone far more (I think) than they used to be and they can get into all kinds of mischief. Drugs – for one thing (all these electronic devices have left them SO bored….) but also (and perhaps for the same reason) sending off a couple nude pictures to this guy/girl they know (who lives in Canada so it’s not like I’ll ever meet him so it’s prolly okay….).
Obviously your mileage may vary, but I suspect we’re both just old men (remember – you’re only 5 days older than me) trying to reconcile the world of today to the one that seemed like it was just here a little while ago.
Man – how time flies…..
Sorry for the double post. Something went wrong while editing.
We try and give our kids as much slack as we can.
My kids walk to and from elementary school unsupervised as part of a small herd. He oldest can bike or walk to friends houses without supervision. The younger two aren’t old enough for independence yet, but we’ll try and give them as much freedom as we can.
My wife and I feel there’s value in a philosophy of “benign neglect”.
That said, we do make sure they eat, do their homework and go to bed early. We also cart them to soccer, gymnastics, swim lessons and all the rest.
I have, however prohibited them from participation in all collision sports. No football, hockey, lacrosse, or cheerleading that involves airial stunts. The risk of long term cognitive impairment or catastrophic injury is too high in my opinion.
I’d prefer if they learned and played sports in the street or the field behind the neighbors house but there are so few free range kids out there that it’s impossible to get any kind of pick up game going. And mores the pity.
We would ride bikes miles from home. We would play tackle football in the street. Mini-bikes and go-carts down the ally. Of course we knew all our neighbors and they would rat us out if we did one thing they didn’t like. I knew every street in my city.
Today, I don’t even know my neighbors and my kids can’t find their way out of a phone booth. Dad, what’s a phone booth?
I grew up in a small neighborhood in upstate NY that was PACKED with kids. We would be out all hours, and the Moms would have to call us in for lunch/dinner. We had woods and a creek up the street, what more could you want?
That being said, I probably wouldn’t have had my first smoke at 11 years old or have been offered pot at 12 if I wasn’t up in the woods all day. Other than that, things were smooth sailing for the most part.
Do I know you from Sherrill, NY?
Being out all night in the woods “camping out.”. Corn King hot dogs, rolls, beans, chips and Swisher Sweets. We were the kings of the world in front of those campfires. 14 or 15 years old.
My 14 year old was at a sleepover two weeks ago where they were in the woods after midnight. I hope he had as good a time as I did.
The feral kids on my block didn’t really roam very much; the kids in the neighborhoods were somewhat territorial, and you didn’t go encroaching on someone else’s area all willy-nilly. Safe passage was generally granted.
We did play pick-up softball games in the vacant lot, among the broken glass and dead TVs. If a batted ball broke a window, that was a ground rule home run. This prize was never collected. The lot was also a good place to light firecrackers.
Our block had a tall brick wall across one end of the street. The other side of the wall was the subway tracks where the IND comes out of the ground on its way to crossing the mighty Gowanus. With the street blocked off like that, it was a sheltered place for stickball, etc. One popular pastime was to ride one’s bike towards the wall as fast as possible and brake as late as possible, which usually worked out OK. It’s slightly downhill as you head towards the wall. One time I smashed into the wall on foot, running at full steam to catch a football.
I lived about a mile from an express train line into London, with regular 125mph trains. There was (is? I hoped it’s locked now) a covered access hole, like a manhole, about 5 feet deep, that my adult mind now knows contained some sort of junction box for electrical cables, I guess for the signals, the actual trains were diesel not electric. Anyway, you could take cover off the hole, it unlocked like a notched teapot lid, and climb in the hole, then hold onto the rust covered rungs on the walls of the hole while the trains thundered overhead. Quite loud and windy as I remember 🙂
RIP Headless Tom
This post resonated because I just re-watched “Stand By Me”. I can remember walking/riding my bike for miles to get to friends houses. As well as hiking miles and miles too. Playing in the woods, crawling through storm water drains, fire crackers…ah good times. As a parent I try to give my kids a long leash. But my wife….she followed the bus the first time they caught it to school!!!
Some of my best memories are heading out on the first snow day to Vepco Hill, a 45-degree dirt road in the woods. We’d sled, smoke pot, laugh all the damn day. Walk home, happy, hungry and tired. No cell phone, no way to be contacted. Occasionally, a mom would creep by in her station wagon and call out for someone to git their ass in the car but that was about it.
If we weren’t out on the jungle gym or screaming and running around in the sprinkler, bikes were ridden most of the day. We had a 7-11 down the street from us and I always managed to have enough change for a “Slurpee” or a “Big Gulp” and just about any kind of candy bar you could want (usually a “Marathon” bar!) It was great! When they built the “K-Marts” across the street, thing got even better! The whole store was our playground. It even had a video arcade! When my next-door neighbor got an Atari 2600 though, we would literally play that all day long!
Now that I think back on it, mom must have LOVED it when we left the house on those summer mornings! No wonder she let us go.
I grew up in central Minnesota back in the 50’s. Kids were everywhere. During the summer, you left the house at 9am and didn’t come home until 4pm. Bicycles were mandatory if you wanted to have fun with friends. There was TV but our town was too far north to get proper reception from Minneapolis…not too much to watch anyway. Many of our activities have been previously commented. We were anti-adult, risk takers. We made fireworks out of caps, read comic books, traded baseball cards, played on the railroad tracks, threw rocks at bums, grubbed pop bottles for pennies, played baseball and football (black eyes and busted teeth), camped out in blanket tents, smoked cigarettes/cigars etc. etc. I think the kids today would probably do the similar things if allowed.
The caps reminded me of spending hours tearing rolls of caps into individual pieces and seeing how many you could stack and then hitting them with hammer and charring the driveway.
I want to say the issue is that if you allow your kid some amount of freedom, comparable to what we had as kids, then some other assbag is going to call cps on you for being a shitty parent! I wanna let my kids go to the park by themselves, the way i did. there’s no more rapists than when i was a kid.
if my kid figures out that by leaning an old tabletop on a cinder block it makes a bitchin jump, i want him to try it, and also learn that leaning forward too much may mean that you’re gonna fold the forks of your bike over and eat absolute shit…with a side of gravel.
we had the biggest, steepest hill in town. and it was liberally strewn with rocks and stumps. AND we’d all go down it at the same time playing something we called ‘chinese downhill’ (sorry to my asian friends..i have no clue where the name came from). anyway…if a dozen kids started at the top, you’d be lucky to have 3 make it to the bottom. and NOBODY questioned what we were doing.
We had lots of woods around our subdivision. My house backed onto one wooded area which was explored high and low. Not so far away was an abandoned gravel pit, and lots more woods filled with dirt bike trails. We took our bicycles into that. Great fun, and the challenge was the old faces of the pit, the dirt bikes already established the trails, pedal power attempted to climb them as well. Also witnessed my first live over the top loss of control on these trails when a dirt bike flat out went to take a jump, we hear the thing full throttle approaching, hit the ramp, and we see dirt bike, and rider flying through the air in what looked like a gentle cartwheel as rider and bike slowly separated arms and legs flailing… and then the crash… we biked over, and the requisite groaning was going on, as limbs where checked, and dirt bike components where gathered together. And then we kept on riding…
We had another location by the river that was inhabited by the more notorious kids, but they had a great bmx track setup, I went ass over tea kettle on that jump… it also was the place I got shot, with a pellet gun. Revenge is a dish best served cold…
Took a bullet out of my fake dads drawer Fucking Rocky told me we (I) should open it the best way I knew how was with a hammer part of it went into my forehead while Rocky sat twenty yards away thing is still in my head above my eye I would never let my daughter do that now call me overprotective
Is this why parents tended to have more than one kid back in the day? If one of them managed to do themselves in via some sort of playtime adventure, there would at least be some siblings left to raise. Was the practice of having numerous kids tantamount to an insurance policy?
It was tantamount to field labor.
Demographers have been using census data and longitudinal study results for decades trying to explain why Americans are having smaller families. There are papers out here on the web that run to 100 pages and more expounding upon this phenomenon. You untangled the mystery in six words. You are truly the Haiku demographer, sir. I tip my hat to you. Were I wearing pants, I’d tip them too.
John
I’m thinking about families living in a more urban setting I reckon. Clearly farm families needed the additional labor power, but in an urban setting, I don’t see the clear advantage of having a bigger brood.
Petty theft, pickpocketing, shoplifting, panhandling, hustling, snatching, grifting, and generally committing acts which will add to the gross family income without risk of adult punishment. The analog of rural acts of planting, tending, harvesting and woodshedding.
Sounds like you had a colorful childhood
It was a little Dickensian with a splash of Roddenberry.
When I was growing up it was nothing for me and a couple of friends to go camping for two days usually Friday and Saturday. We would camp about a mile or so from our house. No parents, or grown ups only beanie weenies, water and us.
I asked my dad not to long ago “what the hell was wrong with him for letting a 6th grader do that?”
Same old answer, “Things were different back then.”
No way I would let my kids do that now.