You've heard about the parents who keep having their kids seized for letting them play outside alone? That sort of thing scared the crap out of me as a single mom. I knew what I could trust my daughter to do and not do, but I never knew when some busybody would take it upon themselves to decide she was unsafe.
I'm 55, and I remember when I just turned 6, walking half a mile to school on city streets to school, home again for lunch, back to school, then home again. When I was 7, I spent the summer walking by myself to the pool in a nearby park and spending the day there. By the time I was 8, it was 3/4 of a mile (different school). By the time I was 10, I was negotiating a city bus to school every day.
Why is it that our kids are so mature in so many ways, but we no longer let them do things on their own -- and allow other people's judgment about what's safe for them trump our own?
thanks! my daughter gave me the sweetest present: a jar she'd decorated and filled with pieces of paper all describing things she was grateful for from me. Made me cry. :)
I've been sitting here at age 67 reminiscing the many times I rode to elementary school on a bicycle that had a wire basket for school books. I haven't seen a bike with a basket for ages.
Still have mine also. So we have a "twin- schwinn (try saying THAT 3 times fast!!!) situation. My schwinn rests in the basement with all the other goodies of yester-year...
I loaned mine out to a university student while I was on active duty, and unlike hundreds of other things which never came back, it actually did. . surprised me to the dickens when I got the call that I could come and pick it up. . still has the dymo label on it showing the date when I bought it with lawn-mowing money. . amazing things happen in this life!!! -- j .
I'm 49, and recall walking/biking every day ~1/2 mile.
When I was 16, I was dropped at my buddy's house, but his family had left for the weekend. I figured it out after a while. It was ~11:30pm, I had $10, and called to see how much a cab was...$10. No way! So I walked home ~20 miles, and arrived home at 4 am. My parents knew I was responsible and didn't even raise an eyebrow.
When my children were little, I lived ~300 yards from the elementary school (ok, maybe 450 yds along the road) They were not allowed to walk or ride their bikes. They had to take the bus. The worst part was, for a while, the bus picked up going away from the school, and my kids spent 40 minutes on it to go 300 yds! The limits to society's risk aversion have no bound!
I rode a city bus (old GM detroit-diesel-powered thing) from 7th grade through 9th, about 12 miles from home to the old school. . walked almost a half mile to the bus stop. . always uphill in heavy snow, from age 12 to age 14.5 . . . carrying the hollowed-out book which held the transistor radio! -- j .
What is the deal with the number of transistors? Better gain with better fidelity, (e.g. a better amplifier)? There really aren't other functions in an AM radio, right? FM has a modulator, AM jut has carrier.
Maybe more transistors meant more sensitivity, selectivity, dynamic range, better shape factor of the filter so that it's flat but rolls off quickly at the boundary of the adjacent channel. Maybe it was marketing too. I better this HD radio next to me has millions of transistors. :)
back then, the classier the radio, the more the number of transistors. . my favorite, a silvertone 7 transistor which looked kinda like this 6 transistor version::: http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sears_roeb_...
I suppose that they used the transistors for more than just final amp -- IF amp, maybe? -- j .
mine wasn't actually leather -- it was some kind of early vinyl-over-fiberboard stuff. . when new, it looked like leather. . cost like leather, too! -- j
p.s. it contained six d-cells and would run all night on the beach at decent volume! .
Don't understand why all the LED flashlights today, just use AAs and AAAs. A C or D cell version would run for ever, and it is still plenty hand-sized.
That's because you had reasonable-sized books ;) Have you seen the monstrosities kids today lug around? They're full color printed on 24-LB compressed paper with hard covers and a one-inch thick book weighs like 10 lbs!
Unfortunately, there is now a strange bias of fear about children in the culture. I think of it as the Precautionary Principle gone crazy and I'm not sure of all it's sources. One, however, seems to have been this fear of child molestation and abduction which started up in the early '80's. The blogger mentions the actual facts "Statistically, the boy would have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than being abducted. But the fear is that child molesters wait behind trees and mailboxes all day to pounce upon wayward children."
I remember thinking "If that many kids were abducted by strangers, I should know a family that was affected." Then I discovered that most of the abducted kids were abducted by a divorced/estranged parent in a custody battle. And that's how that meme got embedded in the culture.
Fortunately, there's some backlash against this - see Lenore Skenazy's blog "Free Range Kids." She got in trouble for letting her 9 year old ride of the NYC subway himself.
I wanted to be more free range and found out that if I showed responsibility my parents let me do more and more. That's how I got street smarts to take care of myself
Exactly! And that's what so many kids are missing out on now. Skenazy had a newspaper great article from 1905 that celebrated the fact a 13 and 5 year old had traveled from the midwest to DC all by themselves to meet the president - then they traveled from the midwest to San Francisco themselves!
The court system is also a culprit. Who finds themselves convicted of child abuse and as a sexual predator is becoming more and more procedurally shocking
""Free Range Kids." The book has a funny story where she quotes something from Amazon about an adult-only video that makes it sound like a porno. It turns out the video is selections from Sesame Street from the 70s. Apparently the most offensive scene is when a kid is out playing in his neighborhood and meets an empty-nester couple who he hangs out with for a while. This is considered scandalous today.
In Las Vegas there are a lot of 15 mph school zones. Unintended consequence is that the high school students just dart out in traffic with no regard for cars. They don't learn personal responsibility when they are young as a result. Pedestrians need to have respect for 3000 lb moving objects and take responsibility for where they put their bodies- the earlier the better
I went to what today would be called a magnet school. It was 4 miles from my house. I had to take a bus, but many tomes I rode my bike to school, carrying my books and a trombone. When I was 5, I was a free-range child. I wandered about as I pleased until I started getting hungry. By the time I was going to high school, I was used to being on my own and able to get anywhere by bus, by bike or by foot.
I love the expression "free range child!" That was me, walking to kindergarten at age 5; riding the city bus to the movies and shopping center at age 9; leaving the house at 7:00 a.m. and not returning home until I was hungry at age 3 or 4. I actually don't remember a time when my mother came looking for me; we had the whole neighborhood as our domain, including the woods behind the house that was full of such dangerous things like trees and rocks. We built forts, explored, made up games, made tents out of bed sheets, and many other fun activities that kept us out of our mothers' hair!
Wasn't it great?? Yet the kids today hardly have any of that, and they're really missing out on the interaction with nature. In the Montessori world, we're concerned about that, because all that stuff is so restricted. We call it "nature deprivation." Being out in nature is not only intellectually enriching, but very calming.
When I went to listen to those videos, the sounds in them reminded me of why I like to garden - leaves rustling, birds calling, all kinds of soft, soothing sounds.
Oh Yes! . asmr reminds me of a quote from someone great in music -- I believe that it was either Satchmo -- Louis Armstrong -- or Berry Gordy of Motown records, when asked how they knew that a song was good. the response::: "When it makes the hair on my arms bristle."
when it happens to me -- mental bristling like that -- I try to capture the moment in some way, to be able to add the music to my collection. . an example::: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=ka...
I have hundreds in the collection. . Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Vladimir Horowitz, Mark Knopfler, Olivia Newton John, Ayn Rand's favorite piano concerto by Saint-Saëns ....... a fine rendition::: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt... it could almost be a young Richard Halley! this makes for an eclectic selection.
I didn't know that it had a name. . WoW. . Thank you very much, Marsha !!! -- john .
That's a great quote! Thanks for sharing the links - I have very wide and deep music faves too! Have you heard this one (but this is the only performance/version that does it for me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TDH7WGs...
now, invention can occur in parallel, sir -- I invented the tuned exhaust for a 4-stroke engine as a kid with a go-cart, and then nascar started to use it, and I never told them about it!!! -- j .
I held a patent on a new style of tripod. No one would manufacture it. Once the patent expired, several Japanese firms produced it. Now, with digital photography, no one needs full sized tripods anymore.
we have one here -- german monster -- really stable!
I invented a different way to do waterjet cutting, and the company did not choose to patent it. . was working at the manhattan project plant then, y12.
but the most fun thing is the teflon spindle which can be used to carefully center an LP for transcription. like the careful work done on this youtube LP transcription::: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYXAVp0N...
we used the cassette tape transcription of the LP of this song as a set-up song for the outdoor sound system (1kW) and people asked why it sounded so good. . transcribed LP with an effective sampling rate well beyond the 44kHz of a CD, we answered. -- j .
I was a 'teen. I could do anything, so I thought. The school was located in a downtown area amidst all the crazy traffic that implies. Thinking back, I should have been scared to death -- but, as I said, I was a 'Teen.
Getting up the nerve to call her (pre-rejection jitters). Ah, sweet innocence. Seems like there's no such thing today. It's as if they know everything from the time they were toddlers. Like a friend of mine once said, "I don't need a computer, I've got a teenager."
sweet wife and I never had kids, so I need a confuser ....... and this one has lotsa miles on it! . still runs well.
I am still friends with my "high school sweetheart" and still feel a tinge of the jitters when I call her. like on her birthday. . april 19. . especially when her husband answers the phone! -- j .
they are retired like we are, and I asked if I might drop by on the harley some pretty day. . "might be uncomfortable" was the reply. . their marriage must be different from ours. -- j .
A high school friend of mine said she'd be in town and wanted to know If we could meet. I was only too happy. She was in the band and orchestra in high school with me, she played the flute. Unfortunately, she passed away before we could get together, a hazard at my (and her) age. I'm still questioning the weird look on my wife's face when I broke the news.
K and I are constantly looking up old friends. . we have a solid marriage and intend to keep it, but we will not live forever. . why not enjoy the present like it is ... a present!!! -- j .
Absolutely! The latter years have turned out to be the best, stress free of my life and if it is within my power, I intend to keep it that way. Actually, if it wasn't for infirmities I'd say, I've come pretty close to Eden. Now, if it weren't for those pesky politicians screwing things up.....
we can hole up here with all the comforts, yet the outside influences (I retired from a prime-govt-contract manhattan project site) keep doing the bait-and-switch thing. . . . . our retiree healthcare has become a fund into which DOE (energy) wants to dip for facility upgrades. . . we're working on a class-action suit, but it's like the Rs attacking the Ds -- they just keep on coming. I *am* getting to do some stuff which has been on the "someday" list for a lifetime -- like, today, I got a pristine pair of Shure 55s microphones in the mail. these are the "Elvis" mics featured in his films and on the Elvis stamp. . while I prefer other artists, the mic is an old standard which will add to our 50th high school reunion next year. . the "kids" will be astonished to see one just like we had in the school auditorium back then. . which works! . while they dance to genuine sock-hop music from my collection. -- j
argh. . sad what's happened up there. . it was such a bustling, successful city when I was up there in the seventies. . my first wife is kin to a woman whose husband was a detroit policeman. . what a city tour he gave us, back then!!! -- j .
In high school I took the city bus to Newark NJ (about 30 min ride). Not long after I was taking the train and subway to New York City on my own. No big deal really
Ok let me show my age. My two sisters and I had to walk about a mile just to catch the bus my mom 2 as kind on rainy and snow and ice days. Mom's story was she had to walk 5 miles to school and when the snow was too deep they walked on top of the fence post (later I figured it was not true fence posts are about 8 feet apart). I'm 52 now with my little girl 6 years old and would freak out if I lived in the city and she played in the front yard. I thank my lucky stars I'm 26 miles from neatest gallon of milk where I know everyone in at least a 5 mile radius.
My kids grew up in the city - Chicago - albeit in one of the safest neighborhoods in it, a place they call The Village in the City because it's so much like an old-fashioned town. But city still and close to some rough neighborhoods. They played outside themselves all the time, wandering around on their bikes pretty far. This was in the 80's and 90's. So city life isn't necessarily that scary and dangerous. They were friends with all kinds of people and it added to their strong sense of individualism as well as self-reliance and resourcefulness.
Sorry I don't feel your appreciation for city life. I can get news casts on net of various cities. Murders, rapes, car jacking, etc on a daily basis. Before shrugging I lived in LA and Phoenix not a life I would want to return to ever. I now live next to a state that borders Illinois where your state doesn't recognize my right to carry concealed weapons and the bad guys do illegally. I glad you feel the way you do and best of luck but I think I'll stay right where I'm at.
Oh, I wasn't trying to convince you to move to the city, but only show that city life isn't necessarily dangerous for kids and even has benefits.
Chicago and Illinois are a mess, doubtless - and much of that is due to the fact that we're such a great place to live, the pols get away with a lot. BTW, Chicago, as a place to live, is very different from LA and Phoenix, much more tight-neighborhood and friendly. Also, the crime is very, very neighborhood dependent. Huge majority of murders drug-gang related, so I can't wait for the legalization of marijuana, as I see that as the first domino to fall in getting rid of the drug war and therefore drug gangs!
I was born in 75. I walked almost a mile to school alone each day, starting at age 6. I walked with another 1st grader. When I was 5 I walked with a friend's 8 yo brother. The crime rate is lower today but we're more sacred.
We moved to Hawaii when I was 5, and in 3rd grade I got kicked off the bus for kicking the bus driver's seat (for 2 weeks, I think it was). My route to and from school was bus, bus, launch, and bus. The launch was a boat that went across Pearl Harbor, before they built the bridge.
So here was this little 8-year-old, me, already branded a trouble-maker, now walking home from school in Honolulu.
It worked out OK, and I even stopped being disrespectful to bus drivers, too. Win-win.
[completely unrelated to this, my sister was born about that time, in Hawaii, and she is almost exactly the same age as Barry. Strangely, the two birth certificates look VERY different from each other.]
a bully pushed me down a rocky hillside in elementary school and broke my collarbone -- the only bone I ever broke until the 4 since I got retarded!!! -- j
p.s. I like your trike! . I have an 07 ultra classic. .
When I grew up there it was truly a vibrant fun place to live. Then, Coleman Young, the first black mayor was elected. He told all the people who didn't like the way he ran the city to "Hit 8 Mile Road." (City limit). They did.
I always walked home from grade(elementary) school. I seem to remember it being more than a mile. Kudos to this kid for his spirit of self-reliance. He is gonna be a handfull for his parents. :)
I'm 55, and I remember when I just turned 6, walking half a mile to school on city streets to school, home again for lunch, back to school, then home again. When I was 7, I spent the summer walking by myself to the pool in a nearby park and spending the day there. By the time I was 8, it was 3/4 of a mile (different school). By the time I was 10, I was negotiating a city bus to school every day.
Why is it that our kids are so mature in so many ways, but we no longer let them do things on their own -- and allow other people's judgment about what's safe for them trump our own?
.
I haven't seen a bike with a basket for ages.
I can still remember Mrs. Meisner coming out to greet me with a stern look.
regardless, I still got chain oil on my pants which
would Not Come Off. -- j
.
and, later, my schwinn, I would be wealthy for sure! -- j
.
it weighs about 100 lbs. more than the bikes of today! -- j
.
schwinn (try saying THAT 3 times fast!!!)
situation. My schwinn rests in the basement
with all the other goodies of yester-year...
on active duty, and unlike hundreds of other things
which never came back, it actually did. . surprised
me to the dickens when I got the call that I could
come and pick it up. . still has the dymo label on it
showing the date when I bought it with lawn-mowing
money. . amazing things happen in this life!!! -- j
.
When I was 16, I was dropped at my buddy's house, but his family had left for the weekend. I figured it out after a while. It was ~11:30pm, I had $10, and called to see how much a cab was...$10. No way! So I walked home ~20 miles, and arrived home at 4 am. My parents knew I was responsible and didn't even raise an eyebrow.
When my children were little, I lived ~300 yards from the elementary school (ok, maybe 450 yds along the road) They were not allowed to walk or ride their bikes. They had to take the bus. The worst part was, for a while, the bus picked up going away from the school, and my kids spent 40 minutes on it to go 300 yds! The limits to society's risk aversion have no bound!
from 7th grade through 9th, about 12 miles from home
to the old school. . walked almost a half mile to the
bus stop. . always uphill in heavy snow, from
age 12 to age 14.5 . . . carrying the hollowed-out
book which held the transistor radio! -- j
.
which just fit. . I was a hit during the world series! -- j
.
of transistors. . my favorite, a silvertone 7 transistor
which looked kinda like this 6 transistor version:::
http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sears_roeb_...
I suppose that they used the transistors for more
than just final amp -- IF amp, maybe? -- j
.
early vinyl-over-fiberboard stuff. . when new, it looked
like leather. . cost like leather, too! -- j
p.s. it contained six d-cells and would run all night
on the beach at decent volume!
.
.
favorite flashlight of the pre-LED era! -- j
.
What you describe sounds very expensive.
so much that it could be made of solid kaolin clay!!! -- j
.
I remember thinking "If that many kids were abducted by strangers, I should know a family that was affected." Then I discovered that most of the abducted kids were abducted by a divorced/estranged parent in a custody battle. And that's how that meme got embedded in the culture.
Fortunately, there's some backlash against this - see Lenore Skenazy's blog "Free Range Kids." She got in trouble for letting her 9 year old ride of the NYC subway himself.
Can you imagine what would happen today?
The book has a funny story where she quotes something from Amazon about an adult-only video that makes it sound like a porno. It turns out the video is selections from Sesame Street from the 70s. Apparently the most offensive scene is when a kid is out playing in his neighborhood and meets an empty-nester couple who he hangs out with for a while. This is considered scandalous today.
I walked to school every day through the 5th grade. It was the norm back then, if you were within a certain distance of the school, no bus for you.
Edit for clarity - every day from first though fifth grades
rational people here, and some clever ones! -- john
.
I have a friend who has trouble falling asleep and he sometimes listens to videos made to trigger ASMR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_...
When I went to listen to those videos, the sounds in them reminded me of why I like to garden - leaves rustling, birds calling, all kinds of soft, soothing sounds.
great in music -- I believe that it was either Satchmo --
Louis Armstrong -- or Berry Gordy of Motown records,
when asked how they knew that a song was good.
the response:::
"When it makes the hair on my arms bristle."
when it happens to me -- mental bristling like that --
I try to capture the moment in some way, to be able
to add the music to my collection. . an example:::
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=ka...
and another:::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuI23wEa...
I have hundreds in the collection. . Sneaky Pete
Kleinow, Vladimir Horowitz, Mark Knopfler, Olivia
Newton John, Ayn Rand's favorite piano concerto
by Saint-Saëns ....... a fine rendition::: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt...
it could almost be a young Richard Halley!
this makes for an eclectic selection.
I didn't know that it had a name. . WoW. . Thank
you very much, Marsha !!! -- john
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEaxelb...
Also, this is a fantastic performance from an artist I just learned about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6m8NcRU...
and Liszt is delicious -- and that rendition lovely!!! -- j
p.s. try this one::: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1PiHsS8...
and this one::: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FgFhBoQ...
.
others which I might mention, like:::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-tqpPiY...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcKKBLuy...
my life has been punctuated with wonderful music
and sharing it with friends is a special delight!!! -- j
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n8lpsiZ...
this is Liz Story, tall softball pitcher from s. california,
on her windham hill album "solid colors." -- j
.
the tuned exhaust for a 4-stroke engine as a kid
with a go-cart, and then nascar started to use it,
and I never told them about it!!! -- j
.
I invented a different way to do waterjet cutting, and
the company did not choose to patent it. . was working
at the manhattan project plant then, y12.
but the most fun thing is the teflon spindle which
can be used to carefully center an LP for transcription.
like the careful work done on this youtube LP
transcription::: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYXAVp0N...
we used the cassette tape transcription of the LP
of this song as a set-up song for the outdoor sound
system (1kW) and people asked why it sounded
so good. . transcribed LP with an effective sampling
rate well beyond the 44kHz of a CD, we answered. -- j
.
I hope?! -- j
.
.
of anything except being rejected by That Girl ... ! -- j
.
and this one has lotsa miles on it! . still runs well.
I am still friends with my "high school sweetheart"
and still feel a tinge of the jitters when I call her.
like on her birthday. . april 19. . especially when
her husband answers the phone! -- j
.
drop by on the harley some pretty day. . "might be
uncomfortable" was the reply. . their marriage must
be different from ours. -- j
.
a solid marriage and intend to keep it, but we will not
live forever. . why not enjoy the present like it is ...
a present!!! -- j
.
The latter years have turned out to be the best, stress free of my life and if it is within my power, I intend to keep it that way. Actually, if it wasn't for infirmities I'd say, I've come pretty close to Eden. Now, if it weren't for those pesky politicians screwing things up.....
outside influences (I retired from a prime-govt-contract
manhattan project site) keep doing the bait-and-switch
thing. . . . . our retiree healthcare has become a fund
into which DOE (energy) wants to dip for facility
upgrades. . . we're working on a class-action suit,
but it's like the Rs attacking the Ds -- they just
keep on coming.
I *am* getting to do some stuff which has been on
the "someday" list for a lifetime -- like, today, I got
a pristine pair of Shure 55s microphones in the mail.
these are the "Elvis" mics featured in his films and
on the Elvis stamp. . while I prefer other artists, the
mic is an old standard which will add to our 50th
high school reunion next year. . the "kids" will be
astonished to see one just like we had in the school
auditorium back then. . which works! . while they
dance to genuine sock-hop music from my collection. -- j
p.s. the mic::: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uncledave9...
.
They tore my high school down. Grand plans to build on the same spot, -- unrealized to date.
a bustling, successful city when I was up there in
the seventies. . my first wife is kin to a woman
whose husband was a detroit policeman. . what a
city tour he gave us, back then!!! -- j
.
Chicago and Illinois are a mess, doubtless - and much of that is due to the fact that we're such a great place to live, the pols get away with a lot. BTW, Chicago, as a place to live, is very different from LA and Phoenix, much more tight-neighborhood and friendly. Also, the crime is very, very neighborhood dependent. Huge majority of murders drug-gang related, so I can't wait for the legalization of marijuana, as I see that as the first domino to fall in getting rid of the drug war and therefore drug gangs!
world. . instead, I'm a doting uncle. -- j
.
I love the slip with the word sacred!!! -- j
.
So here was this little 8-year-old, me, already branded a trouble-maker, now walking home from school in Honolulu.
It worked out OK, and I even stopped being disrespectful to bus drivers, too. Win-win.
[completely unrelated to this, my sister was born about that time, in Hawaii, and she is almost exactly the same age as Barry. Strangely, the two birth certificates look VERY different from each other.]
it's a standing Gutfeld joke. . red eye, the five,
wherever -- Kenya-born BHO....... -- j
.
elementary school and broke my collarbone --
the only bone I ever broke until the 4 since
I got retarded!!! -- j
p.s. I like your trike! . I have an 07 ultra classic.
.
for us old codgers. -- j
.
who took off!!! -- j
.
.
Kudos to this kid for his spirit of self-reliance. He is gonna be a handfull for his parents. :)