Thinking Out Loud
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One is always at home in one's past...
Vladimir Nabokov
We played outside in the rain during some pretty dicey thunderstorms, rode our bikes everywhere and came home when it was dinnertime and started babysitting neighbor kids for money, often until late at night, by age 11 or 12.
We never arranged 'play dates'.
We perused unlocked screen doors looking for our friends and yelled out their name in sing-song fashion.
Stitches were something we got only when the bleeding wouldn't stop or organs were coming out and some of us still have the scars to prove it. We played on extremely high and most often extremely hot, metal slides which we made even slipperier with a good rub down of wax paper stolen from our Mom's kitchen drawer.
We swam in the pool all day, without life jackets and our folks only poked their head out once or twice, usually just to yell at us to quit fighting with our siblings.
We dared dirt, germs and bee stings by going barefoot during our entire summer vacation and only wore shoes when absolutely necessary. Getting dirty wasn't by accident, it was by choice and the rings around the bath tub were the benchmark of how much fun we had that day.
We played with sparklers wearing flammable clothes, ran with Jaw Breaker candy in our mouth and ate Easter eggs that had been sitting on the counter for 2 weeks.
The older kids looked out for the younger kids and the neighborhood in general, watched out for each other. If you did something wrong, your parents were going to hear about it from somebody.
Maybe it really wasn't safe and maybe the world has changed requiring more diligent standards, but sometimes, I really do miss the "Good Ol' Days"...
Don't you?
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Diane Szczepanski |
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0200 Nd: 02-20-2025 d 4 cpr 0
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