When I was four, I used to go to the store all alone, give the guy behind the counter a list of things we needed, and then money. He would bag up the groceries and give me the change back.
I’m another who would run errands for my mother, usually down to the corner store for her cigarettes. I was seven or eight years old. At least Mom let me use part of the change for candy.
That second paragraph sounds like the kind of thing parents in a custody dispute would do, or neighbors who don’t like each other.
Circa 1966, my 12-y/o self was the designated babysitter for my 4 younger sibs, ages 11 to 1. Our parents would go out for dinner or certain events leaving us with specific rules and a designated neighbor’s phone number. Sometimes they’d be out past midnight!!
My own daughter was a latchkey kid at age 9. She’d get herself to the bus in the morning, and when she got home, She’d do her homework till I got home an hour later. Guess I was the bad mommy there.
One day I mentioned to my high school science teacher I’d brought my rifle to school, because I was going frog gigging after class. I planned to shoot a few of the large ones in the pond if I had no luck gigging them.
He responded by asking the class whether I should aim above or below the frogs to account for refraction.
I suspect today’s reaction to a high-schooler bringing his gun to school, with a plan to shoot small animals on the way home, would not be a science lesson. In addition to expulsion, SWAT teams, arrests, and CPS investigations, it’s likely the twitter mob would destroy the family’s lives and livelihood as part of their recreational outrage of the week.
My father beat the crap out of me when I was six, and whipped me with his belt at other times. Legally, he wouldn’t have been accused of anything.
And my 2nd grade teacher used to withhold lunch until our morning work was done. I was a very meticulous student, and often didn’t eat until the bus ride home.
My high school music teacher used to throw chairs and music stands at the kids when he was angry.
And then there were the naked swimming classes.
Oh, yeah. I did that. Cozy.
Pretty much this but shorter distances. I went on the bus unattended too but apparently that is also forbidden now.
My dad used to take my brother and I on rides in his Corvette convertible. I had my butt wedged between the 2 seats.
All us kids had motorcycles, and we rode through the woods on our own, there were horse trails back there, but nobody had horses anymore. I was probably 10-11 when I started riding out there, no phone, no buddy, just me the bike and the trail.
At 13 we went on a family cruise, and my dad convinced a guy in St Maarten to let me rent a scooter, and I just drove off all on my own to explore the city. Maybe this one shouldn’t have been allowed then either.
I walked 1.2 miles to elementary school, for all six years, AFAICT. 1961-67. Alone or with my sister, who is two years younger. Had to cross some major streets, too. Maybe Mom drove us when it was raining, I don’t remember. There certainly was no school bus until I went to junior high, which was two miles away. (Funny, I didn’t realize it was that close until I just now checked with Google Maps. It seemed so much further away back then.)
What frustrates me is that the same people who do the overprotective parenting stuff are the ones who turn around and sneer that “kids today” can’t do anything themselves/need their hand held/aren’t prepared for The Real World.
I’ve often told the story of the day two young men burst into my 9th grade drama class, wearing camouflage, waving rifles, and hollering at us to get down on the ground. Most of us were just bemused, and got down obediently under our desks, but one girl freaked out, crying and screaming that she didn’t want to die. That’s when our teacher laughed and introduced the two young men as former students of hers, who were here to help us learn about improv (or some shit). This happened in 1984, and as far as I know, nothing ever came of it.
In summer, I used to saddle my horse in the morning and ride to my friend’s house, tie my horse to a bush, knock on her window until she got up, went out and saddled her own horse, and then we’d ride to our third friend’s house and so forth until there were four or five of us, then we’d set out on some kind of adventure. Sometimes this involved swimming our horses in the percolation ponds, or getting a slurpee at 7-11, but mostly just heading out into the big mostly wild park near by. When we got hungry we’d ride back to whoever’s house was closest and beg for lunch. No adults knew or cared where we were or when we were planning on getting back (planning? what’s that?).
When I got back into horses 40 years later, I found out that many people with horses are afraid to go outside an arena, and very few of those that do, ever dare ride alone (I rode alone when I was 11 and I ride alone now).
And horses are enormously more expensive to keep than they were then, when we kept them in the field behind the house.
I remember being in the fourth grade and every summer day we would ride our bikes all over. We lived in Squirrel Hill and would ride down Forbes Avenue into Oakland, go to the Carnegie Museum and Phipp’s Conservatory where kids got in free.
In my 1950s childhood, it was not unknown for kids to play freely on the rubble of the remaining bombsites in London.
I was certainly walking to and from school on my own from about the age of 7 and roaming London on public transport from at least 11. My mother would quite often buy me a day pass and send me off with some sandwiches for the day in the school holidays.
The house I grew up in had a brook running through the lot. It couldn’t be seen from the house, had a fairly large pond just where it came through a culvert under the street. We’d go out there and play all day, crawling under the road or damming up the outlet to make the pond bigger. There was a big rope swing that went over the brook further back from the road.
We also followed the brook back through the woods to a different neighborhood where it emptied into a lake, probably 2 miles away. Borrowed the loppers and cut paths through the cat briars. We moved out of that house when I was 11.
I did the same. I was 12. I’m not sure if I got there myself (it was 80 miles from my house), but it’s possible there was an excursion train. In any case, I wandered the fair by myself for an entire day.
I know I took the train the NYC and wandered Manhattan all day by myself when I was only a couple of years older.
When I was four, I used to play unsupervised with the boy across the street. No worries about crossing it (there wasn’t much traffic, but even so . . .).
As a first grader I remember my dad sending me to the drugstore (Rosen’s) on Forbes and Shady (about a block away) for his cigarettes. I’d have a fistful of coins and bring home a pack of Camels.
Bicycling without a helmet, all the time, for years.
Swimming in the ocean with one or both of my sisters, and only occasionally with a parent nearby.
Walking to and from the neighborhood swimming pool alone.
Being left alone with my sisters once while my parents were at a football game. My eldest sister had the bright idea of lighting the Advent wreath… and then we left the dining room and all forgot about it. The smoke later tipped us off that the wreath had burned through the table. My parents were not happy, but were at least relieved that we didn’t burn the house down.
My wife, when she was a little girl growing up in a small Vermont town, walked home from school for lunch every day, about two miles, unescorted, then back again.
A thread that may be of interest:
Pittsburgh, represent! I grew up in a little Ohio River town to the west and Da Boigh was our nearest big city. We went on quite a few family trips there (although I was never unaccompanied; it was an hour’s drive).
While smoking wasn’t allowed on campus by the time I went to high school, many of us knew where the smoking sections had been from older siblings or other previous students. I was a freshman in 1990, so odds are good that it was as late as the 1980s that my high school had a designated smoking area for students. It’s hard to imagine public buildings that allow you to smoke in it now days let alone an educational institution.