I remember when I was a kid, in the Summer, wed leave the house right after breakfast (sometimes right after sunrise after a bowl of Captain Crunch) and run about the neighborhood until lunch. Some times wed go home for lunch and sometimes someones mom would make PB&J sandwiches and Kool-Aid for every kid in the neighborhood.
Wed eat, drink and then go right back to playing.
The boys played baseball and dodge ball or with matchbox cars or played pretend cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians or WWII battle games with toy guns.
Us girls skipped rope and played house and with our Barbies, but some of us girls (like me) liked to play the pretend games with the boys with toy guns because it was more fun and we didnt want to wait and sit at the edge of the yard, just playing nurse to the pretend casualties.
I remember fighting with the boys, saying I should have a gun too, if only for self defense and that I was a very good baseball catcher.
I also remember fighting with some of the girls saying that being a girl was about more they looking pretty . I guess I was a Tomboy.
Wed play pretty much unsupervised, running and riding bikes (without knee pads and helmets) and although we really didnt know at the time, every parent in the neighborhood was looking out for each and every one of us.
If we were lucky some kid in the neighborhood had a pool in his back yard or a trampoline.
Wed go home at dinnertime when our stay at home mom, dad and sisters and brothers, all ate a meal together, that mom lovingly cooked for us, and then wed chomp at the bit to go back outside until dark or sometimes after.
We didnt know why or how, but we felt safe. We didnt worry about drug pushers, child molesters and pedophiles. We werent allergic to peanut butter and we werent on prescription drugs for hyperactivity. Our neighbors allowed us to play in their yards and pools without any lawyers being involved. If one kid hit another, no one called the police but some kid got a spanking and had to make an apology and got grounded.
Im not taking a hundred years ago here, but the late 60s, early 70s.
But times have really changed since then.
Today, in the inner city and even some suburbs, kids as young as ten or even younger are heavily involved in the drug trade. They have no mother or father or caring neighbor to look after them, the drug pushers are their only source of family and stability. Some of these kids arent pretending, they carry real guns and arent afraid to shoot at the police. And sometimes the police have no choice but to shoot back
Sad.
I wouldnt want to be a kid again if I had to be a kid now days.
Caramelgal,
I don’t remember you but it sounds like you grew up in my neighborhood (around the same time). :)
It was like that in the late 70s and 80s when I was growing up, also. And in the neighborhood where I live now, it's still like that.
Except for the woman who owns the home (but rents it) across the street. She won't let the kids in her yard because she thinks we'll sue her if they get hurt.