I think the idea is that they were sent out to the car, unsupervised, for the rest of dinner. presumably with the keys, or how else would they get in?
When I was 9 years old, my dad bought me a BB gun for my birthday. I took it to school for show and tell and nobody even blinked an eye. This was in the mid-70s in rural Texas.
I hate to think of what would happen now if a kid was to do that.
I also could buy cigarettes in middle school at any store, no questions asked.
Yep for the rest of dinner or the shopping trip. There weren’t usually keys involved as back then we rarely locked the car.
Suspension, most likely. Possibly expulsion if the school had a particularly strict no-tolerance guns policy.
A lot of times in these threads I come down on the side of the parents and school districts, because I get unbelievably tired of hearing people bitch about “parents these days” and how much better it was when we all rode around with no helmets or seatbelts and got mashed into pulp when we had car accidents and nobody supervised their kids. However, I have zero patience for zero-tolerance policies. (har.) Whatsit Jr. got into trouble a few weeks ago because he brought a Happy Meal toy to school in his backpack. It was a tiny little Nerf dart shooter thing. The “darts” were little pieces of foam, about two inches long. The only way you could hurt someone with this thing is if you threw the entire thing at them, and even then you’d be lucky to cause a bruise. But it’s a GUN!!11!!! so they have to take it SERIOUSLY!!!. Luckily, his principal is pretty cool, so instead of handing out a disciplinary consequence, they just confiscated the toy and let me know that he can’t bring “toy guns” to school again, and I said, fine.
Sorry for the hijack. The whole thing just really irked me. I mean, a Happy Meal toy? Seriously?
Springfield, Illinois 1970’s.
I walked to elementary school alone (about 4 blocks) through a terrible ghetto, weather be damned.
I walked to a grocery store about 4 blocks in the other direction, and routinely bought household items. This was also through a terrible ghetto; it also involved crossing railroad tracks and being near a busy street, and the store was across the street from a park where bums congregated.
I played tackle football in the middle of the street, with no protective gear of any kind.
Not scandalous, but not done today: I remember having my, and my brother’s, teachers over to the house for dinner. This was in the early-to-mid 1950s, and I don’t even know how prevalent it was back then. And I don’t remember it being even all of our teachers, or only under some circumstances.
He was probably around 12, but I was a very poor judge of ages when I was that young.
When I was 8-9-ish (so this would have been mid-60s), one of the parish priests took a real interest in photographing me. (I’m female.) It was always in the yard outside the rectory. He never asked me to come inside. And he always gave me copies of the photos.
Nobody batted an eyelash back then, but I bet today everybody’s pedophile-o-meter would be going ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.
I was spanked when I was bad. No, I don’t consider it child abuse. Spanking tools were hands, switches, shoes, back of a hairbrush (I hid that one, ouch). I had to go pick my own switch to be spanked with.
Rode to Florida (8+ hour drive) in the back of a pickup truck. On the highway.
One of my teachers in 7th grade took me into his office alone and told me how much prettier and grown up I’d gotten since 6th grade. I was flattered and told my mother. Nothing came of it.
Oh, forgot this one - when I was in fourth grade ('94), a boy brought an unloaded gun to class to use in a skit. He showed it to the teacher and explained that there was no ammo in it, and showed him that it was unloaded. The teacher took it, checked for a clip, and handed it back, saying that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the situation, but he’d allow it, so long as the gun stayed in the classroom.
This was some type of handgun, too, not a BB gun or an air rifle. At the time, I thought it was strange. These days, I can’t believe that the teacher let him use the gun in the skit.
Did I mention that the skit had the boy pointing the gun at another student?
This was in San Antonio Tx.
At the age of 7 or 8, circa 1972, my friend and I used to meet the mailman at the end of the block where he’d parked his truck. He would let us climb in theback with all the bags of mail and look out the back windows while he drove to the next block. We’d hop out and run home.
One day I tripped while climbing into the truck and hit my forehead on the edge of the door sill (sliding door). I had a good size cut…lots of blood. The letter carrier walked me home and handed me over to my Mom. No lawsuit, no arrests…wow. It was a simpler time.
I was born in 1985 and grew up in the boonies - rural NY state and a small town in South Dakota. No crime, no one locked their doors or cars.
I was allowed home alone for a few hours at about age 8. I was in charge of my sisters, 5 and 7 years younger than me, for a few hours at a time by age 11. At age 11 I also had a part-time job sitting my neighbor’s baby (while she was in the house).
My mom taught me to cook young and I made a lot of my own food starting at around age 9, I guess? I loved to bake and made all kinds of stuff.
Mom was home with my younger siblings (and was glad to have my hyperactive butt out of her house), I went out all day when the weather wasn’t bad starting at age 5. I rode my bike all over, went to parks, explored in the woods, browsed stores, bought candy, went to the library, went to my friend’s houses. It was awesome. Nothing ever happened to me - I never even got hurt as a kid (have always been cautious). My only rule was ‘look both ways before you cross the street’.
Now I live in suburban Philadelphia. Kids here have no freedom at all, it’s so depressing. Crime here is fairly bad, but I will try to give my future kids as much of their own life as possible.
Also, my mom hit me a lot, which is very out of vogue these days. It was looked down on then, too, I suppose. She spanked a ton (with a hard object like a wooden spoon or hairbrush so she didn’t hurt her hand), and would slap our faces if we ‘talked back’ (we weren’t allowed to argue when she gave a command). I don’t consider it abuse, although other things she did were abusive. It was mean and done out of anger and a desire to hurt us, though, and I won’t be physically disiplining my own kids.
I’ve ridden in the back of a pickup truck countless times, and my best friend’s mom when we were young had this minivan with all the seats taken out of it - she would 7 kids around in it and tell us to stay down so the cops wouldn’t see us, LOL.
Reading back over this, it sounds like a movie from the 50s. It was only 15 years ago!
My high school had a student’s smoking lounge for those who wanted to start developing lung cancer at a young age. My father flipped out when I casually mentioned that at dinner one night…
Just a little cautionary tale for those who leave their kids in the car. My grandmother once did this with my Mom, my Uncle and one of their cousins while she ran into the bank for a couple of minutes. My mother was four, which I’m guessing puts my uncle at around seven or eight.
Anyway, somehow he threw the car into neutral while it was parked on a hill. It began rolling backwards and all the kids had to bail out. My Mom ended up underneath the car with the front tire on her chest. She stopped breathing and my grandmother and all the nearby pedestrians had to lift the car off of her body. The medics were able to revive her just in the nick of time. Her entire rib cage was crushed.
Just so you know.
We got left in the car constantly, but I knew better than to touch anything.
I never see kids left alone in the car anymore, which is a good thing. When I was a kid I was always hearing about the little suckers locking themselves and the keys in (since in our town people never locked their cars and left the keys in the ignition all the time), and their mothers having to find the cops to bust the door open.
Once my dad had me and my two baby sisters loaded up in our driveway and went back inside for something. He forgot to put on the emergency brake, and we rolled down the drive and out into the street - which was right after a sharp curve that semis came barreling down on a regular basis. I don’t think he’s ever forgiven himself for that.
Kids everywhere have no freedom (that’s a good way of expressing it). We watched a documentary on how kids are being raised currently, and it looks like they are scheduled within an inch of their lives with very little time for free, unsupervised play (there’s no time, plus all parents are terrified that if they take their eyes off their kid for a second, something terrible will happen). Kids today have very few responsibilities beyond school and extracurricular activities, but they also have little freedom.
This is a vast and ridiculous overgeneralization.
I’ve got 3 brothers, and we played basketball in our driveway. Each and every one of those games would now result in multiple counts of domestic violence.
Of course it’s not true for every child. But it’s absolutely true for the vast majority of the children between 5 and 15 that I know (and I know a lot). My neighborhood is chock full of kids - there are a lot of Catholic families with more than 4-5 children, even - and yet I never see them outside unless they are climbing into a car to go to an activity. I walk my dogs all over this town and even on weekends with good winter or in summer, sometimes I won’t see a single kid. I have to wonder where the heck they all are and what they are doing - obviously they aren’t going place on their own like I did.
I grew up in the midwest in the early 80s - which pretty much straddled both the “do anything” and “uber saftey” cultures.
Examples:
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rode bike and skateboards everywhere, but helmets and pads where catching on with safety moms
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parents set up a password with me in a the odd event that any other adult would offer me a ride
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lick/stick-on tattoos were “so likely laced with drugs”, that we weren’t allowed to use them.
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walked/biked between one and five miles home (we moved a lot)
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Trick or Treat was wide open, but our candy was inspected for needles, blades, and poison. Homemade stuff got tossed.
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joined a full contact tackle football league in a neighboring city during 6th grade, opting out of the local and popular flag football league
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graduated my state of Illinois Hunter’s Safety Course at age nine, but was not allowed to hunt solo until 17 or so. I missed one question on the final exam (about trapping), and was clearly one of the smarter ones in the class - even though there were high school boys in there. Highlights include high school boys adamantly arguing that there were no such thing as semi-automatic handguns, dry firing a revolver indoors without checking to see if it was loaded, and a test filled with questions like:
You hear a noise in a bush. Do you…
a) shoot it before anyone else in your party gets to
b) fire in the air to spook it
c) wait until you can visually ID what is making the noise -
Played hardball since forever, but - after much arguing from a safety mom - the league tried out a RIF (reduced injury factor) rubberized ball after a pitch hit a teammate in the eye and put him in the hospital for a damned good stretch. The RIF ball had a tendency to go dead on grounders, and only lasted a game or two before the coaches roundly rejected it.
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hardball league also changed the rules to allow us to charge the catcher from third just like the pros.
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ran on an irregularly shaped (think rounded lopsided rectangle) cinder track from 1910 or so. Concrete curbs. That track, the high school’s, was only replaced in the late 90s I’ve heard.
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parents took me out on a lake in the jon boat since I was a toddler - in a play pen. I’ve always had to wear a life jacket, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t make them for babies, at least back then.
That’s all for now