The young mother was incredulous. “You mean, you let your kids play in the back yard by themselves – unsupervised? What if something happens to them?”
Maybe all that protection is necessary. There really are dangers out there.
But I’m pretty sure the dangers kids face today are pretty much the same dangers we faced yesterday. Sometimes we got hurt – everything from a skinned knee to a broken arm, from a bee sting to a cut and bleeding finger.
I think the difference was we had just come out of a world war where the men were overseas fighting and the moms were working double shifts at the defense plant. There was neither time nor manpower to hover over us kids. We were expected to shift for ourselves, use common sense and look out for one another.
We learned to recognize danger and avoid it. We were responsible for our own conduct and our own safety.
A typical summer day in my home started with everybody up, dressed and at the breakfast table at the same time. Dad wanted to count noses before going to work.
“In case gypsies carted off one of you during the night,” he would say.
After breakfast I had chores: Feed the chickens, clean the cages, empty the ashes, weed the garden, pick the tomatoes.
I jumped on them right away, but I made sure to do them right. I knew if they didn’t pass Dad’s muster when he got home, I’d be doing them again.
Chores done, I’d jump on my bike, yell “G’bye” to Mom and hit the road. Ten minutes later I would arrive at the house, the park or the intersection where all the other guys had assembled. Don’t ask how we knew where to meet. We just knew.
We also knew exactly what we were going to do that day. We never talked about it or put it to a vote, we just knew. Sometimes it was fishing at the gravel pit, or skinny-dipping at the swimming hole. Sometimes we spent the entire day in some guy’s yard planning daring exploits that we knew would never happen.
We always ate lunch at whatever guy’s house we wound up at around noon. Peanut butter and jelly was the same everywhere. And if one of us got hurt, the nearest mom would apply mercurochrome and Band-Aids.
After a full day, one of us would notice the sun was going down Then we silently got on our bikes and headed home for supper.
Kids don’t do that anymore. After all, something might happen to them. Still, I have hope for that mom who lets her kids play unsupervised in the back yard.
