I used to walk half a mile to school when I was in elementary school. I didn’t walk ALL the time, as I had the option to bus, but other parents were shocked that I was allowed to do this.
I was also spanked as a kid, and my brother would often be locked in the garage whenever he threw a temper tantrum. Which was often.
I also remember a kid in middle school who missed the bus after a field trip and was left behind. As punishment, one of the teachers led the kid around school on a leash the next day. Everyone involved thought it was amusing (including the kid in question), but I’m pretty sure they’re not allowed to do that anymore.
I used to walk home from school since I started going in Kindergarten. I was four, and the school was a mile from my house, with a heavily-traveled road in between, not to mention a pond. I managed to do it for a year without getting run overr or drowning.
For the next eight years I walked home from school a distance of about three miles, usually through the heart of town. If I had a dentist’s appointment I’d go straight there from school.
Both my mother and my father worked, so I’d be considered a “latchkey kid”. I did, indeed, have to use a key to get in to the house, and stayed alone a few hours until my parents got home.
When I was 11 my parents let me wander around Expo 67 for one day by myself. In a foreign country, where the language was French.
I was in third in 1976. I don’t recall any yardstick swords but there were a few paddles in school.
I just remembered something from a middle school social studies class, I think 8th grade. For some reason, we weren’t able to use our regluar classroom that day so we had class in the library instead and the teacher was having a difficult time controlling us. I was trying to congratulate a fellow student for doing well on a test but apparently the teacher mistook my offering of a handshake for an attempt to arm-wrestle and yanked my hair!
Come to think of it, that’s probably when I started being reluctant to shake hands.
Heh - that reminded me of another one. As a kid I had a habit of wandering off when we were out shopping at a mall - my mom got used to it, so she’d be off somewhere and I’d be off on my own, in my own little world. I’d eventually find her again, and that would be that. Apparently I still do this; my husband has made it his habit to always walk slightly behind me while shopping so he can keep an eye on where I am.
My entire family of six used to go places in my dad’s '66 Mustang convertible together. Four seatbelts, next to youngest brother in the middle of the back seat, youngest on the console in the front.
I would often wonder off to go look at the paper dolls. I loved, loved, loved paper dolls. (I still do - but I’m very picky about them - they have to be the right kind. And I haven’t found the right kind in years.)
If I couldn’t find my mom - I never panicked. I would just go up to a store associate and have her paged. Eventually this mortified my mom and I wasn’t allowed to wander off any more.
Starting at the age of about eight I used to run to the bank for various members of the family because the bank had very inconvenient hours. Nobody ever had a problem with letting me walk around with upwards of $150 in cash on my person (worth over $500 in today’s money).
When I was 4 or 5 there was a forest fire in the wooded area next to our neighborhood. I ran up and helped fight the fire with handfuls of sand. Got lost for a while, but made it out unscathed.
My sister and I were left to our own devices from the time we got home from school until one of our parents came home. We were 9 and 8 respectively. We each had a key in case the other lost theirs, because our parents didn’t want us stuck outside if the weather was bad.
We even used the stove and a few times we baked cakes from scratch. I think that’s when I started to learn basic cooking skills - when there was no adult around.
We also just used to tell our mom: “Well meet you by the gumball machines”. She would grocery shop and we would take off to explore the rest of the shopping mall (mostly the pet store). That probably started when my sister was a first graders. I remember I was old enough to tell time and just old enough for my parents to trust that I could wear a watch and not lose it. I think I was 5 and my sister was 6 at the time.
Well, I was around 6 or 7 when my Mom started leaving me home alone. I still remember when she made me my own house key–it was a big presentation.
The other day I was talking about how I used to get accused of irresponsibility all of the time by my Mom. I said, ‘‘I wasn’t that irresponsible. I got straight As, went to church and got my first part-time job at 13.’’ The person I was talking to about fell off her chair. I guess starting work at 13 is not typical? Hell, I really started working when I was 9, but since it had been for my parents, I didn’t figure it counted.
Finally, bio Dad used to take me into bars all the time when I was a kid–pretty much every weekend I saw him between 4 years and 9 years of age. Because he was a regular, I got to stay late. Personally I loved it–a pool table, a jukebox, endless soda and a handful of quarters! The worst I ever saw was like a painting of a naked lady and some cuss words. But I guess that’d be considered scandalous.
When I was around five or six I spent the night at a next-door neighbor friend’s house and she warned me to wear underpants to bed because her big brother would sneak into the room during the night and pull up the sheets to see our naked parts.
I don’t think I told my mom, but it’s funny to imagine what would come of that today.
When I was eleven years old I purchased a sword at a neighborhood yard sale. I paid ten dollars cash. When I say sword I mean it. It was a sabre with a 35 inch blade, hecho en Mexico. It was rusted and dull; still what kind of moron sells a sword to some eleven year old kid on a bike? Now for the really scandalous part. I took it straight home and my dad caught me with it coming in the back door. He spent the next few hours cleaning and sharpening the sword with rust remover and his rotary tools. It turned out great. It shone like new chrome and cut through paper like a straight razor. Then he gave it back to me! The only stipulation was that I should share it with my older brother (age thirteen). So brother made a wooden “man” from my dad’s scrap wood pile, and we took turns hacking woody to death in the back yard, totally unsupervised. When he was thoroughly reduced to a pile of splinters we’d make another wooden man, and when the sword was worn dull dad would sharpen it again. (He wouldn’t dare let us use his rotary tools). We played with that sword for years. I still can’t believe one of us didn’t get run through.
About this time my friends and I would go camping in the woods near our neighborhood. This was about four miles from my house. I have no idea who owned that tract of land, but it wasn’t a park, nor was it owned by any of my friend’s parents. Again, this was completely without supervision. We would take tents, sleeping bags, knives, and flashlights and ride our bikes out until the woods became too thick to continue riding, then we’d go on foot. Our moms made us sack dinners to take. We would build fires and construct forts and basically act like the lost boys. We made fun of the one neighborhood kid whose mom wouldn’t let him come. The only time we got in trouble was when we forgot where we had left our bikes and my dad had to help us search for them in the thick of the forest.
Tending bar was something my sister and I learned fairly early, certainly before the age of 10. No problems with alcoholism in our house, but Dad liked a cold beer on a hot day, and if he was doing that, Mom would join him with a gin-and-tonic; and if relatives or friends happened by at that time, well, Sis and I would take orders, prepare drinks, and serve them. Interestingly, it never occurred to us to try what we were mixing while we were doing it, unless an adult invited us to (which rarely happened).
Of course, like many have already said, we had the fairly common experiences of buying smokes for our folks, walking to school from age 5, and being out playing until the streetlights came on. But we also tended bar.
In the 60s, I remember my dad giving me 26 cents and sending me to Shure’s Drugstore for a pack of cigarettes. I would have been under 10 because that was when he quit.
I was 11 when my youngest sister was born, and that was about the time I started babysitting my 4 sibs. Mom and Dad would go out for the evening, and I’d be “in charge” which meant I just made sure we followed our usual nighttime routine. Plus I’d clean the kitchen and have a pot of coffee made for when they got home.
Never wore a helmet bicycling, never wore wrist or knee guards when skating, used to go exploring all over the place on my bike - as long as I got home at a specified time, I was good.
Heck, my own daughter was a latchkey kid at 9, and I found out later I could have gotten in a lot of trouble for that. Because, you know, a 9-y/o can’t possibly get off the bus, get into the house, lock the door, and do her homework for an hour till Mom got home. :rolleyes: Guess I’m lucky she’s not in prison.
My experiences are similar to others posted. In Summer or when school was not otherwise in session, I had the freedom to go anywhere my bike could take me, just be home at dark. Riding in the back of pickup trucks. Lots of shooting, but always supervised by an adult until I was 12 or so, and then I could got shooting alone while visiting my grandparents who lived in the middle of nowhere. At about 15, I was allowed to go hunting with other boys.
Never had any problem buying smokes, but I did have to bring a note from my mother to buy a tube of model glue. Had no idea people would sniff that stuff (in hindsight, it was the early 70s). I wanted it for building models. Horror kits were all the rage in m neighborhood…The Mummy, Hunchback, Jekyll & Hide, Dracula, and assorted cars/planes/etc.
ETA: On bicycling without helmets–this is the only way it was done. The kid that showed up wearing a helmet while riding his bike may as well wear a big “Kick my ass please” sign.
Along the lines of no seat belts, when I was 3 or 4 my Mom started having me stand on the back seat and read the street signs to her, because her distance vision wasn’t very good. This would have been the early '70’s.
I mentioned this in the last thread of this sort: When I was about 8 or 9, my friends and I used to hang out with “Phil,” the 30ish year old batchalor who lived across the street. Phil didn’t have any kids, but he did always have toys and ice cream and cartoons to watch. He also worked as a PR guy for Kools cigarettes, so all the neighborhood kids got little gifts of pens that said “Kool” or Kool tumblers that changed color when you put an icy drink in them. Mainly we went over in groups, but I know I thought nothing of knocking on Phil’s door to play all by myself.
Now as far as I know, nothing weird ever went down (certainly he never did anything to me), but eventually my parents told me that my sisters and I weren’t allowed at Phil’s house anymore. He moved not long after that.
When I was in 2nd grade, the teacher would lock us in the “cloak room” as punishment. It was pitch black in there, with no ventilation. And if the kid was crying or screaming, he would be ignored. The teacher also would not let us eat lunch until we finished our morning’s work. I was very meticulous, especially with art work, and it wasn’t unusual for me to not get to eat lunch.
In high school, we had swimming class every day for 6 weeks, every semester. The boys had to swim nude. If we had a doctor’s note to skip swimming, we had to walk around the pool, naked, for the period. The girls wore swim suits.
And everyone had to shower after gym class.
We also had very strict dress codes. Boys’ hair could not be over our ears or our collar. No t-shirts or sneakers or jeans. And we had to wear a belt. Girls could not wear pants or patent leather shoes. And their skirts had to touch the floor when they knelt. Yes, there was an assistant principal who would make girls kneel on the floor to see whether their skirts were too short.
And when our music teacher lost his temper, he would throw music stands at kids.
