I used to do that too. Disappear into the forest playing explorer for hours. Left to play in the parking lot of supermarkets and such. In small town Hilo this was nothing.
It seems as though in the near future I could talk about how I got to wear whatever I wanted to school and got the whole summer off.
Poor poor kids of the future.
There was this cool little creek thing about a mile from my house, where all the sidewalk culverts drain. These huge concrete pipes you could climb up into and go wandering through. Man, that was fun.
I do feel sorry for em. Though they have some cool toys that I wish I had.
Well, some of these brought back some memories for me too, and I’m not that old (only 30):
The high school where I teach (and which I also attended) just put in a smoking policy a few years ago, I’d say in the mid-90s. It was an open campus, and smoking outside the building at dances, etc., as well as before and after school and lunch periods, was common and allowed. In fact, there were routinely teachers who’d smoke with the kids. Now they practically crucify anyone caught smoking–smoking cessation classes, detention, the whole bit. This is a Catholic high school, by the way, which surprises some people because the school was so lenient back in the day, but this school was always pretty good about allowing the kids certain freedoms.
In the back of the church (the entryway, not the actual worship area), there would always be people smoking when I was younger.
My dad routinely took me to bars with him when I was 5 or 6. His softball team would go out after games. My brothers and I would play the pinball machines and such as the adults drank. Somehow, I don’t think this would be looked upon very favorably anymore.
Dogs roamed the neighborhood when I was a kid, nobody cared.
“Be home before dark” was the norm.
I remember when people smoked in grocery stores.
I had an uncle who used to drive with a nice big glass of Scotch on the rocks…he thought nothing of it.
Many of the toys I had would never be sold today, Yard Jarts and realistic toy guns.
My mother used to let me run off to the toy department of any big store we went into (which back then was usually K-Mart or Sears) while she did her shopping in other areas. She tells me that she would not do this today and make me stay with her (what a drag this would be, waiting for my mom to look at drapes, shoes, etc.). She also used to let us stay out in the car if she had a short errand to run. She’d even leave the key and we could listen to the radio (AM only, whoo hoo!) while she was in the store.
Why were you in school in July?
For us it was: “Come in when the streetlights come on.”
Check out some old family party/wedding snapshots from the 40’s and 50’s. There’s always some 8-and-a-half-months-pregnant woman with a cigarette in one hand and a big glass of booze in the other. Seems downright shocking now.
This still see that a lot. I’d be really upset if I saw someone getting heavily liquored up while their child played, but usually the parent is just socializing.
This brings back memories of playing hopscotch, jacks, or any other neighborhood game. Mom said “Come home when the streetlights come on”. Nowadays, you practically have to be two inches away from your child at all times. Also, seatbelt laws were nonexistent at the time. I remember family trips where the boys were seated at the way back area in the station wagon. They were crawling all over the backseat area.
Actually, in my neighborhood, kids run around all the time with no adult supervision. (This is kind of the sticks.)
When I was a kid my mom just plunked me in the back seat of the car, no carseat, no booster seat, no restraining belts and pulleys, no seat belts even. When she took a sharp turn I’d tumble over onto the other side of the car from inertia. It was fun.
So if my mom did that now, she’d be all over the 6:00 news getting pilloried. Howcome the difference? Was she a bad mom? It amazes me how our attitude towards kids has changed so much in 30-40 years. We used to be pretty casual about them. Now it’s all deadly serious.
We had a carseat when I was a kid but looking back on it, it was a total piece of junk, not like the ones now. It was pretty much similar to a high-chair seat with hooks on the back that went over the car’s seat. (Similar to Maggie’s in the opening to the Simpsons.) It had like one flimsy strap around your waist and all you had to do to get out of it was go limp and slide down and out the bottom.
I recently picked up a book of american advertising from the 1940’s and it’s chock full of stuff that’s freakish now but not a big deal back then. Juice ads proclaimed “Plenty of vitamins to help our boys beat the Japs!” Doctors advised cigarettes to “calm” you. Car companies pushed their new automatic transmissions to women because manual transmissions were apparently too “hard” for them to understand. LOL! and YIKES!
Prayer. The Supreme Court ruled on organized prayer before I started school, but my fifth grade teacher set aside a quiet moment after the pledge where we could pray or meditate (I still like the idea.)
Football coaches hitting their players or throwing them through the drills.
When I was in my young party days I used to have a pick-up truck. Every weekend me and about 10 or so of my friends would hop in my truck (3 in the front and the rest in the open back) and we would drive up to Hollywood and cruise all over town like that.
Looking back now it was maybe a bit dangerous but the experience of being in the open air on the freeway was worth it 
I’m still in school, and when I was in fourth or fifth grade they gave out bibles. I’m offended now, them assuming I was Christian. (me being atheist an’ all)
I remeber in grade school; if you fucked up, the teacher would call you to the back of the class and spank your ass. No call to the parents, no call for a wittness… nothing!
I also rember being a kid and hanging out at the neighbors house. No kids there just adults that thought I was a funny little kid and they would let me hang out and visit for a while. Now tha truely is sad that society has to be so cautious these days. What the fuck happened to us people?
Because now we have CNN and other news programs to drive everyone into a frothy panic every time something remotely upsetting happens.
When did this change? I know it has, and those confusing “playdates” are the norm now, but I’m not that old at all (25) and I have trouble imagining not being able to simply go out and play with your friends. Even when I was 5 or 6 I’d just knock on a neighbor’s door and go play in the apartment complex’s vast yard. There were rarely adults around, and this was in the middle of the city. Parents would look out the windows occasionally to check on us, but no one hovered. It was fun.
By the time I was 11, my best friend growing up and I would spend hours roaming in the woods, often bringing my baby brother, who is 6 years younger, with us- mostly because of my mom’s favorite line then " Yes you can go play, if your bring him with you. He cries when you leave him behind." If that was now, we wouldn’t even be considered old enough to babysit him in the house.
New parents would probably have fits if I told them that I babysat him all day every summer from the time I was 12 until he was in fifth grade. Imagine leaving a hyperactive six-year-old with a twelve year old babysitter for your entire work day! One of the neighbors knew we were home, so we could have gone to her if there was a problem, but there never was. (Well, there was that one time I needed to get stitches when I did something foolish with a knife, but other than that…) We’ve talked about it now that he’s older, and he never did figure out why I started the nightly tradition during the summer of watching Nick at Night until 3 or 4am- we wouldn’t wake up until late morning or early afternoon, so it lessened the time we had to irritate each other while our parents worked 
Apparently he thought I just really liked Dobby Gillis and Patty Duke!
In the early 80’s in Washington, DC marijuana was very widely accepted. I smoked joints on the steps of the Capitol Building. In the department at the Smithsonian where I worked, we would occasionally have a staff meeting out on the Mall, and somebody would light one up an pass it around during the meeting. People (and I’m talking about adults, not college kids) openly smoked dope at parties. And WE LIKED IT!
By the late 80’s you couldn;t do that any more.
Riding my bike about 3 miles to get videos and Nintendo games from the video store. Parents today would have a heart attack (most of em, anyway). And the clerks’d die laughing.