I remember we used to tuck the seat belts in on the back seat of our station wagon so they wouldn’t get in our way . . . . Whenever someone insisted on us wearing them – it was always a big deal to pull them out and find them all.
Oh, and we used to buckle the front seat belts behind us because they were on some kind of sensor - and if you didn’t buckle them, this buzzing alarm would go off.
I learned how to play poker at about age four, from playing Yachtzee with my family. Our family priest (also my Godfather) taught me how to bet and how to bluff.
I just flashed back to “Quiet in the courthouse, monkey wants to speak!” The next one to make a sound was called “monkey”. That won’t fly today if a minority is in the room.
Starting at age 11, (1981), while visiting my grandparents for the summer in North Central Arkansas, I’d be allowed to go fishing by myself. I was fairly mature for my age, having four older brothers.
This involved: [ul][li]driving my grandpa’s pickup three miles or so down to the lake, (he taught me to drive when I was 10) []where he had his metal boat covered and tied up on the dock [] gassing up and starting the 10 hp Evinrude motor []motoring out into the lake to my “secret” spots and crankbaiting about 20 yards from the shoreline [] motoring back, docking and re-tying up the boat [] raising the motor up out of the water (the most difficult part) [] cleaning the fish on the bank with my Rapala knife (that’s the exact knife - I can’t believe I found a picture)[/li][li] taking gas can, poles, tackle, and cleaned fish fillets in a little cooler, putting them in the truck and driving back to their house, beaming with pride at my catch.[/ul][/li]
My mother (his daughter) found out about this fairly recently, and was…not amused.
Wow, brings back memories! Our cars didn’t HAVE seatbelts when I was little. My brother and I used to stand behind the front seats. Of course, the max speed limit back then was 45, but still. When we had a station wagon, and my dad was sent to the San Francisco area from the LA area, my mom took us to see him; we slept in the back end on the way up, as we left long before dawn.
Not only did we play outside all day, if we ran in and out of the house too much, mom threatened to lock us out. We played hide n seek during the summer until after dark - I remember “hiding” up a tree one time and only the fact I had dark clothes on and it WAS after dark, was I not caught.
My uncle had a whole slew of guns (he regularly went hunting) in the house. I don’t remember where he kept them, but it never occurred to any of the kids to even think about touching them. We knew to leave alone things that did not belong to us.
We had a swimming pool and it was then that we had to fence in our backyard. We didn’t have to have any adults at home, as long as we weren’t completely alone, we could go swimming.
Ah yes, times have indeed changed.
I don’t know if it would be more scandalous now that my friend in high school got beat up, and I mean bad, by another girl over a guy. What’s definitely scandalous, though, is that her parents did not press charges.
I can confirm the nude-swimming in high school in the 60’s; happened every day.
Also, in band, when someone f-ed up, the teacher would fling his baton at the offender. And I mean, hard, as if he aimed to injure. Then he’d make the student go get it and bring it back to him.
All my gym teachers had large wooden paddles on display, and they used them, sometimes on a bare ass.
Ahhhh…those were the days. 
Walked a mile to school from first grade to 6th grade. Then 2 miles to Jr hi and a mile and a half to HS. In all weather.
One time the film broke a the movies and it got out late. Well my sister and I had told dad when the movie would be out and he had been there to pick us up but we did not come out and he went home. When we called he said he had been there at the time we said. So we had to walk home. Almost 2 miles at night.
One summer while visiting our uncle in Germany my sister walked to the lake to go swimming. That was about two miles and we did not speak German. We were 11 and 12.
When I was 12 and my brother was 9, my mom let the two of us go to Honolulu for 3 days by ourselves. We lived near San Francisco and had been to Hawaii many times (we come from an airline family). We stayed in a hotel owned by the airline and people there knew who we were… but I still can’t believe we were able to do that.
Not super scandalous, but I started getting allergy shots at age 7, and our family doctor was two long bus rides away. I went by myself on Tuesdays after school and on Saturday. The worst thing for me was it was boring, because I couldn’t read on the bus (I got carsick if I tried). Also it could get pretty cold out in the winter, and waiting for buses was no fun. The trip was at least an hour each way, more if I had to wait a long time for the transfer. This would have started in 1956 and ended maybe in 1961. After two or three years I only went once a week, which I opted to do on Saturday.
Looking back, since it was only a nurse who gave me the shots, I don’t know why they couldn’t have found someplace closer where I could have gotten them. I’m sure it had something to do with money, but man, that seems cold.
Born in 1959.
My siblings and I walked to school by ourselves, starting in the first grade. Well, the first-graders were usually accompanied by an older child (meaning a kid in third grade, perhaps).
My parents sent us, as little kids, to the store to buy cigarettes.
As a senior in high school, I was allowed to smoke in school.
After school, we were allowed to go out, unsupervised, until dinnertime. In the summer, we could be gone all day, as long as we were back for dinner. There were some limits as to how far we could go, but they were routinely exceeded.
I took the subway to high school by myself starting on the first day of high school.
This was all in New York City.
I was allowed to play with zombies for as long as I can remember.
Starting around age 5 or 6, I was responsible for baking cookies - my mother would make the dough, turn on the oven and hand me a cookie sheet, and disappear. I hated it! I was always terrified I would burn myself.
These are probably less common than they were in your day (and mine), but they certainly are far from extinct, and I wouldn’t describe them as scandalous.
In my small city it isn’t unusual to see primary grade students walking to and from school without an adult. It helps that there are crossing guards at the major intersections near the elementary schools. [This does NOT happen in the more suburban districts nearby, where people sometimes drive to the end of their driveways to pick up their kids when they exit the buses, and nobody but nobody walks to school (then again, there are few if any sidewalks).]
As for subways–My niece and nephew, current high school students in Chicago, take trains to school; one of them takes two trains. They started the first day of HS, like you. (Actually before; one of them did a summer session.) Most of their friends do the same thing.
The smoking atuff, I agree wouldn’t fly so well these days, and a good thing too.
I probably responded to this thread back when it was new; I did 't see a post of mine at first glance and I can’t be arsed to look through the whole thing. My list for this particular topic is very very long, because, duh, I’m old(ish). The reason I’m responding now actually relates to the thread in Café Society about rock stars not being held accountable for having sex with underage groupies, which then led to a wider discussion. When I and my BFF at the time were both 16, we dated two guys who were 22 and 24. Our parents knew-in fact my mom liked my guy- and the problems only started when we started staying out too late, coming home drunk and basically participating in the activities that girls their own age would normally do. In other words, it wasn’t the age difference, it was *our *behavior. My parents are not (well, were, as they’re both deceased) stupid, negligent our unworldly. True, they were somewhat older and may have been harkening back to a time when that was more the norm, I’m not sure. In any event, today those guys would be branded as predators. At school we had any number of young male,(and female now that I think about it) teachers who were known to be flirty and more, and those of us that felt comfortable working it did. Today I hear the hysteria, here and from the world at large and I just shake my head. I’m not in a position to be objective I suppose, but it feels like the world has gotten itself into a big old tizzy.
As others have recounted, I walked to school from the time I was eleven and the school was in walking distance. Before that, from the age of six to ten I walked to the bus stop that was about a block or two away. I was taking the bus with my girlfriends to the mall and movies since I was probably about ten. We were walking to the drug store - crossing Pacific Coast Hwy -since the first day my family moved into the house in which I grew up; I was five and my brother was ten. At twelve I was taking the bus to my orthodontist appts. I could go on and on. Throughout this whole time, there was a . . . pervert on the loose that I and my girlfriends encountered frequently; we nicknamed him “The Dwiddler” because he would stare at us and masturbate. I look back at my growing up years and it feels like I was literally on a different planet.
On the answering side, growing up mostly in the 60s and early 70s, almost everything. I was taken into smoke-filled bars with different relatives, I was spanked, we kids were allowed to wander all around the county by ourselves and take buses into the Big Cities (Scranton and then Pittsburgh) alone, and maybe a hundred other things I can think of. Sometimes it seems as 95% of what we did, or were allowed to do, would send a parent to court these days.
When I was 23, I was dating, and having sex with, a 17-year-old girl. We were coworkers, and she was the one who asked me out to begin the relationship. Her dad was pretty cool with the relationship, and I’m pretty sure he knew what was going on. Her stepmother*, OTOH, was a real bitch (my girlfriend didn’t like her, either) who seemed determined to put a stop to us, going so far as to ransack my girlfriend’s purse and find her birth control pills. That was what prompted us to go to the public library to access the books that contained our state laws on the subject, and we confirmed that 16 was the age of consent here. Since I was not in a “position of authority” over her, what we were doing was perfectly legal.
Right, bars. Forgot about that.
If my parents were going out on a given night, it was standard procedure for them to get ready and then leave. We (the kids) would walk out with them, and they would go to the subway or get in a cab or whatever, and we’d walk over to the neighborhood old man bar, where my retired maternal grandfather hung out with all his retired buddies. We’d walk into the bar, and the bartender (who knew us) would let us sit on barstools and give us sodas, and we’d sit there and have fun and play with the cocktail stirrers and so on while all the guys smoked and drank and talked about stuff over our heads.
Eventually, my grandfather would decide to go home, and we’d walk to his house with him, and later my parents would stop by and get us. Or sometimes, if they were going to be out late, we’d spend the night at my grandfather’s and walk back home the next day.
That would probably get parents in a lot of trouble today. . .
