Monday, July 16, 2012

Free Reign In the Summ'a

Barbara: There was a fun article in the Life section of the paper the other day (damned if I can find it to link), looking at the days of yore (ie the seventies and back) and the days of new, and comparing the differences in how children play. I know it’s a well-addressed theme—we got to play wherever and however we wanted and today’s kids are cloistered and over-protected—but still, I thought it would be fun to ask about your experiences and share our childhood memories … since it is summ'a, after all!!

Yeah, yeah, I am old enough to be from the generation of Free Play. When I think back to my childhood, I have vivid memories of hours and hours spent exploring the woods that abutted our suburban house. It was a large tract of land clearly slated for future development, but which languished in my time in wild, thorny, and verdant splendour. Hard dirt paths carved through the woods, ample clue that they were popular with more than just this curious 9-year-old child. But I don’t remember ever seeing anyone. I could take an entire artillery of flotsam with me—Barbie dolls, sand pails, plastic animals—and create new and amazing worlds in those woods. I could invent stories rife with travesty and betrayal and magic and deep abiding love. I could lie amid thigh-high grasses and just inhale the dry, hot, wildflower fragrance. I never worried about “strangers”; I cherished the bright rays of the sun; I didn’t imagine the possibility of fierce animals or broken bones or helplessness. I know I must have played in these woods with my friends, but strangely, that’s not what I remember. The memories that linger of this carefree time are the ones of me alone, responsible to no one, utterly unrestrained.

And then times changed and I grew up and so did the world and our fears and our woes. And I had my own children and had to make a choice (or choiceS: choice after choice after choice) on how we would raise them. Sadly, I couldn’t risk allowing them to utter abandon. On the one hand, I don’t agree with the mother in the article who laments, “The world is a different place!” It is in many ways, but not, I don’t think, in the pure mathematical logic of more psychopaths—because that’s who we fear when we fear the “stranger”. I imagine that the odds are about the same (with the exception, maybe, of a slightly higher population affecting the pure amount of them). On the other hand, I completely relate to the father who says something like, “But I can’t risk my child being the one child.” So I never walked the street without holding a hand and I never let them out of my sight (and so never lost them). That said, I was always aware of a kind of childhood injustice when it came to their freedom—the freedom necessary, in my opinion, to develop their imaginations and curiosity and problem-solving skills.

I asked the girls about how it was to grow up the way they did … and their answers surprised me. They have their own sweet memories of childhood abandon. For them, it was sweet summer days spent in the backyard creating worlds in their sandbox or in our garden. It was cold winter hours in the “mess” of a basement where we allowed their toys to have their own sort of wild free reign. They say they have no dearth of experience when it comes to freedom and independence. Even if I only remember hovering at the kitchen window making sure they were safe outside or tracking their basement safety from upstairs. Maybe a kid’s always gonna do what a kid’s gotta do!

What is your experience of childhood play—is it carefree abandon or cloistered restriction?

Deb: Mine was a combination of both, I would say. My parents certainly wanted to know where I was, but we were allowed to run free in the fields, and up at the cottage we spent endless hours by the creek, in the forest, and in the farmer’s field. We had a huge tree on the other side of the creek that we would climb every day as part of our ongoing game of Robin Hood. We would sneak into the abandoned (haunted, to our young imaginations) cottage that we were told not to enter but did anyway. Walks to “Big Rock” for the big climb and picking wild raspberries were all part of the daily fun. Our parents were secure in the knowledge that we would come home for meals, which we always did.

I will have to ask the boy if he had any such adventures that I did not know about. Sadly I was not as cool a parent when I became a Mom. I was, I am ashamed to admit, too worried about his safety to let go too too much. But I think the boy would tell tales of tobogganing on the big hill, building snow forts, and climbing the next-door neighbour’s tree. The toughest and best thing I ever did was letting go enough for him to have camp experiences. After one session, I settled into letting go and trusting that he was going to be okay. Also, having a pool has adventure built in and I think he remembers it that way. I hope the fact that I walked him to school till he was shaving does not colour his memories of childhood abandon! :-)
Phil sent me this and I had to include it. Credits, anyone???

56 comments:

  1. How ironic. I was just thinking about something like this earlier. I remember being a kid and my mom would banish us kids outside. We would just play and play all day until it was dinnertime. Then we would go outside and play again until it was dark.

    Even during school days I would still try to have some playtime...after I did my homework. I think of kids in this day and age. Most of them are left at home with babysitters. Then the TV becomes the babysitter. Quite sad actually :/ And we wonder why child obesity is becoming a growing epidemic...

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    1. Now you're in the age of those I would've thought to be a "hold onto the reigns" kid. So glad you got to run and explore. What would you do for your own future kids???

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    2. Throw 'em outside like our parents did with us! LOL!

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    3. But that surprises me, Barb...although Kelly and I do have a friend who was kept hermetically sealed as a child. She got sick all the time.

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    4. Okay, how ironic is that???

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    5. After you did your homework, eh? LOL I never completed my homework! The school kids used to tease me as I was always the "I forgot my homework" and "I lost my notebook" girl. And in all of the notebooks, my rough book was the only book which actually had notes written on it! Well if they would count scribbled illustrations as notes ofcourse!

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  2. Ah yes, so many memories. To this topic I have the ones of roaming the forrest and fields near by. I do have to say that I couldn't even imagine my niece to go to the same places as me and my sister (and my aunt) went at her age (6). During the summer time when the busy season was on, there wasn't much of parental supervision. Everyone who could would work. So we traveled across the land around the farm. I was told later that three little girls were never that quiet that you couldn't hear where we were walking about :))

    Then when we were little bit older, and had moved on from the farm, me and my sister would continue our roaming in the suburban area. We walked to school by ourselves. She would walk us there in the first day of school... sometimes. I remember once after changing the school she took my sister and I was taken by her husband. But that's besides the point. We have been able to come and go as we please quite well. She did have a time set when we needed to be in the latest. We weren't always allowed to use the phone, but we could go roam the nearby forrest when we wanted to in every place where we lived.

    When I was a kid I didn't know what the strawberries smelled. :)

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    1. While it made me laugh out loud, it's also really true that kids are never very quiet (and therefore not so hard to track), especially when traveling in packs! Did you always feel safe?

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    2. Well I was the youngest, so yes. I had my aunt (1,5 yrs my senior) and my sister (1yr senior) to take care of me. Altough my aunt has been going to therapy for few years now and some issues have been caused by this lack of supervision. Well she has more strong images of having my mother watching over, or more likely not watching and going on her own business. Then when I was a bit older I already knew that I could take care of me and my sister if needed (took care of my sister when she had ear infection at 12 or so) so as long as I was able to trust myself I knew I would be safe.

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  3. Aww this is so adorable!! I had a ..I would say, a very VIVID childhood. I had a LOT OF TOYS...and I mean A LOT!!!! I had so many Barbie dolls and during my time they had just started making Barbie's kitchen or Barbie's living room and stuff, that was very cute! I used to play with these all the time! I wanted to get a Ken doll too, I was always the fairytale type, but (and this might be shocking) at a very early age I was taught "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LOVE". So My mom never ever let me anywhere near those fairytales (She let me watch cartoons about them though...hmph. Weird)
    And I loved watching cartoons!!!!! I STILL DO!!!!!!!! Back then cartoon network was MY LIFE! I spent my childhood mostly at my aunt's. When I didnt have school,I used to watch cartoons until 5. (Coz Dexter's Lab used to be at 4.30 and I LOVED HIM) and then I would go play outside until my mom came to pick me up.

    My mom was kinda the panicky types. She did give me freedom to go play outside with my friends but IDK after I was like 7 years old, she started becoming more protective of me. She wouldnt let me be with boys who she didnt like or let me play with them.(Mother's heart, I dont blame her ofcourse) And unfortunately my childhood sort of ended abruptly by the time I was 9. I went through an incident (It used to be traumatic but now I'm glad I went through it, it helped me get stronger) when I was 8 and that kinda changed me completely. I spent most of the time after that being kinda depressed and sad but I started thriving after I started college and after I found LOA ofcourse!

    Ohhh... I always think about "How would I raise my kids?" (BTW I'm hoping to have 2. One of each kind, would be nice! Wouldnt mind either way! :D) I'm still constructing my Parents guide. LOL. But I think I'm gonna be the cool mom. Follow my LOA principles and raise them with the help of that! HA! But I'll need a LOA freak as a husband for that too! (Please universe!! Extremely talented tall fair guy with broad shoulders, Big calves... and INSANELY BLUE EYES!!!!) What was I talking about??... OH YES! Raising kids... Oh.. I think It'll be fun. And I have you girls as my personal trainers right?

    Anyway, Ive blabbered enough! For me, in terms of toys my childhood was AWESOME!, towards the end it was filled with emotional chaos!!!! But now when I look back...I HAVE NO REGRETS!

    P.S. Deb, I could imagine everything you wrote. That was so cute!!!! YOU'RE SO ADORABLE! (And I'm saying this coz, Ive had a "protective" mother. You have NO.IDEA!)

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    1. Wow, you had a lot to process as a child -- but I guess that also means you had a lot to explore, in every sense of the word. YOU are adorable, Shalaka!

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  4. I was born in 1980 so still in the running free time, but with a Jamaican mum who was very very nervous and protective (I think it might be a Jamaican thing partly...). I wasn't allowed to walk to school by myself or run off with my friends for the day. But we didnt watch tv- and there were no computers/video games/ or mobiles of course. And we lived in a tiny house on a big block of land packed with fruit trees and a pool and bush (bush is like what you guys call woods). And the house was full of siblings and cousins and friends, 12 cats, 2 dogs, a duck, and at one point an injured magpie bird that lived in our shower... My mum was like the pied piper for sick or upset people and animals. It never really bothered me that I didnt have the same freedom as my friends because life was always an adventure and I was allowed to run free amidst the chaos- just not venture outside it alone.

    I'm trying hard to give Sanjay (my 3 year old) the same childhood I had but I find I'm even more nervous and protective than my mum was! And our neighbours aren't as nice, our backyard not as big, and there's too many video games and iphones that his friends play with that he desperately wants to play with as well. I'm hoping he looks back on his childhood with very happy memories.. He's already patting my stomach and asking when he can play with the baby, so hopefully they'll become happy little partners in crime having adventures together.
    Nobody warned me that parenting was a constant stress about whether you're doing the right thing! You desperately want to protect them from everything horrible, while at the same time wanting them to be happy and relaxed and confident that the world is a good place. So hard!

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    1. Oh, just such a lovely post, Samara (you are so poetically evocative). Your own childhood, while it might've been restricted, sounds pretty idyllic for nurturing creativity. As for the constant worrying stuff, I can say this with some confidence: if you are there for your kids, if you allow them some space but also give them a lot of love, no matter what the "mistakes", they will thrive in their own ways. You might not stop worrying, but you will see that for sure. You sound like you are so on the right track! Lucky Sanjay and future bebe.

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  5. I played with kids that lived around me. We rode bikes (and fell off), we colored in coloring books (which was one of my favorite activities). I never was a kid that wanted to venture too far from home. I was afraid of everyone and everything. My grandmother was my favorite person to play with. She would play dolls with me, color, go exploring, everything. I loved to go to yard sales with her. That was a Saturday morning thing.
    As I got older, I started to enjoy reading more and playing video games. I still loved the other activities, but my interests grew.
    I have a few nephews, and I have hardly ever seen them outside playing. They have every game console that I know of and they love playing games on it. I can not keep up with them anymore on video games. I can see the change between what was "fun" for me as a kid and what's "fun" for them.

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    1. I just read somewhere about the "Goodnight Moon" theory. The philosophy is that any kid can thrive, regardless of social status, as long as he or she has a certain amount of parental support, gets read to, and has time for the imagination to fly. TV or uninterrupted game-playing obviously risks interfering with that balance (but that's also my opinion...) I certainly let my kids watch TV and play video games back in the day, but I did limit it. And then didn't need to anymore...

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  6. Well being born in '93 I think I missed the free play days. My brother is three years younger than I am so we played well together. Me being a tomboy just helped. We both played with tonka trucks and caught lightning bugs and any insect that was slower than us and dug holes in my poor dads lawn just for fun : ). My dad's mom lived right next door to us so her yard was our own personal jungle to explore! we were allowed to roam into her yard when ever we wanted even when we were real young. And I guess because she was grandparent and not parent, us digging up her grass didn't seem to bother her one bit : ). My brother and I loved the freedom of leaving our yard and being able to feel like we were really roaming free, despite just being next door in Grams yard. As we got older mom inforced the srteet light rule. We had to be home BEFORE the street lights came on. We were only allowed to be in a 1-2 block radius from our home but it still felt like freedom. With all the firefighters we know who live in the neighborhood and my gram, I don't think my brother and I were every really without someone looking over us. Even now that I am 19 and free to go anywhere I please I still have the neighbors looking out fo me. I like it. It makes the neighborhood feel like family.

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    1. Wow, I love love love this!! Thank you so much for sharing this, Kelly. Happy roaming and safety all mixed up. That's a rare combo...

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    2. Ohh!!! '93 ???? I'm a '92 kid... I know how you feel! HA! And I thought I was the youngest here..LOL

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    3. Wow didn't realize how close in age we were Shalaka! Yeah I am the oldest kid in my house but as my brother got taller most people didn't realize that there was three years between us. For a few years we got called twins and now strangers just assume he is a year or two older than me!! I like being the youngest, or being thought of as the youngest anyway : )

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  7. We had freedom. We played in a park near our house. Dawn to dusk we were outside. Statistically speaking nothing has changed if anything crime has gone down. There are not more pedophiles than there were then. Statistics prove that the internet and media have just become so more important in reporting. All these things happened back int he day but we just didn't hear about it. My kids will say they also had freedom (41 and 39). I lived on a great street where neighbors looked through their windows to see us on occasion. My kids grew up on the same street with the same freedom. Now my older son lives on the same street but their kids play outside only with adult supervision and are for more likely to just play in their backyard.
    My kids walked to school and always in a group and yes, someone called them over to see his puppy and all they saw was his penis. They ran home, laughing and talking about what he was doing. This happened in my day as well and we laughed too. With all the stranger danger training they had they still went to see the puppy as the guy sat in his car. The odds of your kids being kidnapped by a stranger rare, odds of seeing a guy masturbating maybe, Many more things to worry about in my mind than this happening. I do find myself more careful with my grandkids than I ever was with my own kids but not sure that has anything to do with fear of abduction as it does to the wrath of their parents if I do it something they don't like.

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    1. Yes, I think we did transfer a lot of worry to our parents. I see that with mine. They would never let their grandkids (our children) roam free!!

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  8. Luckily, where i grew up/am still growing up in is a small town where everyone knows their neighbors and knows everyone in their class. In fact in my class there is only 33 students, i believe, and we've all been together since pre-k. So when we were kids i could just say that i was going to [insert name here]'s house to play and they would just smile and say "Ok, just be back before lunch" :)
    It's true they wanted to know where i was, but after they knew i would just go out on an adventure with my friends. Although i'm not sure if i'll be able to do that with my kids, when or if i have them, seeing as how the world seems to change so drastically.

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    1. Oh, that is so wonderful, Garret! You're so lucky. As for your your own kids, I truly don't think the world is changing, I think we're more afraid. But I also think we need to operate inside our comfort zones -- and that might mean (as in Deb's example) letting them play "free", but secretly watching them without them knowing ;)

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    3. I think that'll be my only option :P

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  9. We had a ton of freedom growing up. We played outside all day. We were only allowed to watch one half hour TV show a night (usually Bewitched) We had a cottage in the Laurentians and would play all day in the woods,caves, swim until we were prunes,canoe, fish. Our imaginations were as wild as we were.....the whole street would have a war with two teams or generals and two camps with tents. We knew to go home when the street lights came on, because that's when ghosts came out on our street. We hardly ever played in our own backyards, but the whole street was our world. The was a school behind our house which was great for bike riding and roller skating in the summer and had a rink for skating in the winter. We all played hockey together and only came in when our feet were absolutely frozen. The rink had lights at night and the sound of a puck hitting the boards still brings back fond memories.
    We walked to school on our own and we were only allowed to do extra activities ie, ballet or piano lessons if we could get there and back ourselves. It was all fine, but seems very different than today. I must ask my boys if they felt free or really supervised in their childhood. I have a feeling that they would say quite free, but with more restrictions than I had....

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    1. It's so funny that "ghosts" figured in both your and Deb's childhood play memories. If I had thought there was a ghost around, damn certain I woulda been outta there!!! I also spent soooo many hours out on our local ice rink at night. That was pure magic.

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  10. Ah, yes. Those were the days! Myself and my sister used to play out until it was dark, with absolutely no fear for our safety. I'm not saying there weren't bad people around then, but there wasn't the paranoia that there is now. We weren't afraid to talk to people, to wander into the woods, to let our imaginations run free until we heard our mum call us in. It's sad how much things have changed since then.

    Despite the current climate of fear, I'm determined to give my two girls at least some of the freedom I had. They're now eight and nine (almost ten, I hear my oldest say in my head!). I let them play out, and I let them go to the park by themselves - always with a set of rules in mind, and a time to come home, but they're free. I don't want to restrict their childhoods or take away everything that made mine so memorable and joyous, even if I have to bury my worry deep inside every time I hear the door close.

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    1. Hear, hear, Roz! I'm sure your girls very much appreciate the joyful abandon.

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  11. I remember our sandbox, riding bikes down the road, the plastic kiddie pools/sprinklers. We'd watch our brother play his video games, we'd play Legos for hours on end. We'd stay outside until dinner, go eat, and then stay outside until we could barely see. Kelly and I played volleyball with an inflatable beach ball and laugh hysterically whenever a gust of wind would jerk it away! We played "Pickle" with our brother and dad. Kelly and I had Barbies among Barbies, Beanie Babies, American Girl dolls (5 of them, I can still tell you their names), the works!

    Oh to be a kid again....;)

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    1. Thanks, Holly, this just made me feel so good. What is it about these kinds of childhood memories that evoke such lovely happiness?

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    2. The innocence that children brings. I suppose :]

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  12. I'm going to start this off with a stark example of the difference between my childhood and my daughter's: She does not know how to ride a bike.

    I blame Sarah's lack of "outdoor activities" on school choice. Malden is big enough to have several K-8 schools spread out all over the city. Sarah went to one outside our neighborhood, and the kids were also spread out over the city. They couldn't hang out together roaming all over the neighborhood without a parent following them. Play dates, if any, were inside. Totally different from how I grew up.

    (This all happened before I was diabetic & before the psych illnesses kicked in.)

    The kids I hung out with all went to the same school, and all lived on the same block, with connecting backyards between the streets. Dottie, her little sister Jeannie, Tricia, her brother Steven, Diane, Katrina, my brother Mark, and me. Easy to connect for the 8 of us, riding our bikes, playing tag or hide-and-seek. When the older kids played h'n's, too, our territory expanded to include this ratty old shed, which happened to have the most awesome tree with the most awesome LONG STRONG branch crossing over it. Fun times on that branch and all over the area. (Huge group of us for that game, like 15 or more. FUN.)

    We also climbed trees in the cemetery around the block from us. There was a big space nowhere near stones (then), and we climbed the trees there, or played the occasional game of "go get the ball!" (That's baseball to the rest of the world.)(Later, most of us learned to drive there. Very quiet, car-free.)

    We played kickball. We roller-skated. We played Red Rover. A couple of us had picnic tables, so we ate lunch, then colored or played Barbies on those. My family had the best (safest) swing set, so we played on that, jumping off the swings at the highest arc. In the summer, we had a big round orange kids pool. (Not one of those plastic things, though. You could feel the bumps in the ground through the bottom of ours when you sat down in it.) We'd get wet, then run across the yard to one of the girls' front stairs and made wet butt prints on the cement steps.

    For 2 weeks every summer, my family would go to NH. My godmother's family would go up at the same time, and there were a LOT of them. The people that owned the group of cabins had two daughters around our age, so we hung with them and some cousins in the big family. It was a group of cabins right on Alton Bay, the very southernmost tip of Lake Winnepasaukee. Whole different world. Sand, swimming, pinball, swimming, movie house (theater was in a mansion-type building), swimming, some motor-boating and water-skiing, swimming... You get the idea.

    This all lasted til I hit 7th grade. 2 of the group were older and headed for HS. 3 were younger and stayed in the elementary school. Dottie and I went into 7th grade. The alphabet basically changed the dynamics of our friendship. Her last name started with F, mine with P... different homerooms, different lockers, and different classes based on whatever basis they used.

    Nowadays, Diane and I are still in the same houses, and our yards are back to back. We talk more on facebook. LOL Dottie is six blocks away. We didn't know that until we found each other on FB. The three of us are due for drinks again. We each have our own life, but what started 40+ years ago is still there. They laughed their asses off at the Colin and Brad show we went to together, so it's all good. :)

    I live with my parents in the house I grew up in, and I'm looking out into the back yard as I type this. Those were some good times.

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    1. I noticed the "when the streetlights came on" rule in a few posts here. That rule existed in a roundabout way here. Just before they came on, Tricia and Steven's dad would whistle for them. Big LOUD resounding whistle. Right after that, my mother or father, D&J's father, and Tina's father would all yell for us, but we knew after that first whistle that the day was over.

      We never went anywhere but around the block. My mother would throw us out of the house for the day and, that I know of, never worried about anything. We only saw parents if someone started screaming. Then we saw ALL of them trying to identify the scream. LOL

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    2. Amazing, Dawn. You just completely drew me in. I am so loving this back-in-time thing! Amazing that you and Dottie and Diane (the 3 D's!) are all in the same circle again. That must make for a very grounding "safe place". Growing up is hard, but we can still take time-outs to enjoy some of those child-like graces (like howling at improv, right?!)

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    3. Oops, we cross-posted here. Your bit about all the parents coming out at the sound of a scream killed me (you see? they were paying attention!)

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    4. Barb, your mention of cross-posting reminded me of something I hadn't thought about, or done, in a loooooong time. When I was walking down the street with anyone, usually from the above mentioned group, and we'd have to walk around a pole on either side, we'd say, "Bread and butter." It's amazing, the stuff that jogs your memory, and what the heck the memory is.

      I can remember everything I wrote above like it happened yesterday, and that pole thing just slipped to the front of my mind. Why can't I remember to take the laundry out of the dryer, then?

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  13. I lived in a similiar area to Barbara's. So we had enough space to go out and play. And I have been a wild girl. Climbed trees, played in the mud, strolled through construction sites.
    I never worried about strangers, either. I used to stay at my friend's house, and lie to my Mom, when I came home later (bad girl!).

    When I was older, I played with my other friends on a farm (belonged to my friend's Grandparents). I loved to pet the cows, play in the hay, muck the stall, stay up late...and play all sorts of funny games (we pretended to have horses and did some tournaments). I've had a great childhood, and my parents weren't strict. I could basically do everything I wanted to do (includes falling off a tree and landing on my back *whoops*).

    I never was afraid or worried. I just lived. Boy, had I been happy...

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    1. So beautiful! I think your geo-caching sounds a bit like this childhood experience. Which is probably why it sounds so appealing to me!

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  14. I remember the summer before kindergarten? first grade? age 4 or 5? being fascinated by the thousands of tadpoles in the water in the ditch at the front edge of our yard in Panama City, Florida. Every day I'd spend the longest time watching them, seeing their legs develop, watching them turn into little frogs at different rates. I checked on them every single day. Slowly, the ditch water began to recede. One afternoon, there was so little water! All the little tadpoles were crowded and very frantic, piled thickly upon each other - a wiggling, desperate, messy, black pile. I FREAKED OUT!!! My mother wasat the neigh bor's and I ran to her and asked, "What happens when the tadpoles run out of water?!?!" She said, "They die." To me, it this a raging emergency! I HAD TO SAVE THE TADPOLES!!! I pleaded with my mother crying, begging for buckets and glass jars and all the containers of water I could get so I could SAVE THE TADPOLES. She said no. That was when my mother explained about tadpoles, baby sea turtles, etc. and how thousands are born but only a few dozen get to grow up. The brutality of nature broke my heart that afternoon. That truth left me with a gaping, sucking chest wound. I kept arguing with her, "But, we can't just LET it happen. We can't just watch them die! That's mean! We have to TRY! We have to DO SOMETHING!" I was devastated. I was also very, very angry. I remember standing by the ditch, crying over the dying tadpoles, and praying some very angry, questioning prayers at God. Oh, how I screamed at God for being so cruel! "Why do you let babies be born if they're just gonna die before they get to do anything?!?!?" I was one very indignant, upset little girl! For the next couple of days, I argued with my mother that, "But, we can SAVE SOME! We can rescue SOME! There's still a chance! There are a few left!" She insisted that nature had to take its course. Truthfully, I figure she just didn't want a tadpole nursery of containers filled with dirty water all over the carport. I felt so responsible for those tadpoles. I could NOT understand why my mother wouldn't help when there was need. Finally, all the water was gone, and there were thick, lumping mounds of decaying tadpoles. I couldn't look anymore. The tadpole graveyard was too much for me. For all the summers thereafter, I never watched any tadpoles in ditches again. If I knew it was tadpole time, I'd go out of my way to avoid seeing where they were for a few weeks. Something inside my little girl heart broke that week.

    Fast forward to 1994. That summer, age 21, I read Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions for the first time. One of the passages that reached into my chest and imbedded itself into my heart was when she wrote about the baby sea turtles and their lousy survival rate and, while watching her baby son Sam, she would pray to God to please just let Sam be one of the baby turtles that made it.

    Fast forward to 1998. My son is born that November. I'm 25, turning 26 in December. My son is in the NICU. And, I keep thinking about those tadpoles, the baby sea turtles, and Anne Lamott's prayer. I'm sitting in that room surrounded by sick and dying babies, beeping monitors, wailing alarms, and I pray gut level, incoherent, raw, wailing prayers. All I want is for my baby to be one of the ones who make it.

    I still get an uncomfortable, squirmy, sad feeling thinking about those tadpoles. To this day, I flinch from situations like that, either in real life or watching nature documentaries. I thought about it when y'all made the sea turtle posts from Costa Rica.

    But, as an adult, I do things like pick up an injured turtle from the road, put him in a cardboard box, and take him to the vet's office. I've taken in stray cats and found homes for others. Things like that. Because, I realize that I can't just stand there and watch the tadpoles die. I'm a buckets and Mason jars person. I have to fight for the helpless.

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    1. There. Then. http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q68/pepsibookcat/easter19772.jpg

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    2. Such a sad story. But the photo is awesome!!

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    3. LOL I just realized that, even though I'm all dressed up Easter Sunday little girl in that picture, all the bruises on my legs show you what I tomboy I really was. :)

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  15. I have distinct memories of playing in the gorse-filled (ouch!) wild bush of Wainuiomata for hours on end while my parents cleaned our school (it was parent-run and poor - parents took turns cleaning it). Accidents have happened there, and if you go high enough into the hills you can quite easily stumble across someone's attempt at home-grown marijuana =) However we were free to roam there with just a, "Don't stray too far!" from Mum.

    On more ordinary days we spent all day playing outside, on bikes, occasionally walking down to the park etc. Except in winter when reading and playing with toys became our amuesement. Unless it rained, in which case we'd all go outside and splash around much to our mother's upset and our father's amusement.

    Essentially my brothers and I spent our time in as much wild abandon as our individual personalities allowed.

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    1. Love this!! (gotta watch those secret marijuana plants and their growers ;) )

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  16. Better stuff, both Florida and Alabama:

    Riding my bike around the neighborhood for hours on end, especially down the "fast hill". My bike had rainbows and butterflies on it and had a banana seat.

    The granddaughter of the couple next door in Panama City was my babysitter when I was little. My parents and I were close friends with that whole extended family. We're still in touch with them, the ones who are still alive. I used to love on Saturday mornings, after cartoons, finding out that Karren and her little brother Ricky were next door at their grandparents. (I ADORED Karren. She was in HIGH SCHOOL. She was FANCY. lolol) The father and grandfather often went oystering. I have such soothing, happy, blissful memories of playing in the 2 adjoining backyards with Karren and Ricky while Mr. Riley and his son sat on their carport shucking oysters. Later that afternoon, Mrs. Riley would fry up the oysters, and we'd all pile into their house to eat. Mr. Riley nicknamed me Freck because I was a little toeheaded beachrat with freckles all over my face. :)

    Two elderly ladies down the street lived in a duplex (in Alabama). They had a fancy driveway that was a loop with an entrance and an exit. We kids thought the ladies had their own road! Two of the "big kids" with 10speed bikes would tie water ski ropes/handles to the back of their bikes. Smaller kids would take turns standing on a skate board and holding the ski handle while the big kid rode the bike as fast as possible and pulled the "skiing" kid around that loop.

    When the new chiropractor's office got built at the end of the road up by the highway, they had dump trucks full of rocks brought in to lay down as their parking lot. Whatever quarry those rocks came from was a treasure chest to me because the rocks were full of seashell fossils! Total paleontology binge!!! BLISS!!! I spent a bazillion Sunday afternoon hours digging in their parking lot and down the side of the slope at the edge gathering fossils. I knew I couldn't leave holes behind and was careful. I kept filling my box full of rocks and fossils.

    There was an elementary school at the back edge of the block. All the neighborhood kids played on that playground all weekend. Swinging on the swings, climbing, playing on the concrete basketball court. Even when I was 10-13 and in middle school, I'd walk down there on weekends and watch the city league and church league softball teams practice. I even got to meet my first FBI agent during one of those softball practices! :) Then, a bad thing happened and I didn't go there anymore.

    I drove my parents crazy because I was constantly dragging home boards and other awesome bits of debris from curbside trash piles. I built forts! My parents drew the line the time I drug home 2 glass and screen doors from down the block and put them together to build a "fancy" triangular fort with windows. I thought it was the coolest fort I'd ever built. All they could imagine was the blood spurting after I'd sliced into myself with sheets of glass. lol "TAKE THAT THING APART AND PUT THAT TRASH BACK WHERE YOU GOT IT FROM!" Still, though, when the people in the house across the street from the Emersons were remodelling, the neighborhood kids had the raw materials for some really great forts that summer!

    Getting my dad's old college telescope out from the bottom of the cabinet in the hall and setting it up on the front porch and looking at the craters on the moon.

    Going to visit family in Arkansas and catching lightning bugs with my cousins.

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    1. My mother told me about her dad and brother and our "they've lived there forever and my dad grew up with the wife" neighbor's dad going fishing for eel. When they got home, they'd fry up the eel. They were Belgian, and I just googled and discovered that yes, Belgians were/are big on eel. They were always trying to get my mother to eat it. She says it smelled absolutely delicious but since she knew what it was, she wouldn't eat it.

      (She's also the only one in my family who doesn't know how absolutely DIVINE escargot is.)
      (Escargot---Escargone)

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  17. Looking for crawdads in the ditch by Erin's house. Never finding enough to cook up, but still enjoying the hunt. lol

    Girl Scout daycamp

    Playing with garter snakes. Scaring my mother to screaming with the snakes.

    Playing with rolypolies.

    When the new accountant's office was being built at the end of the road by the highway, that construction sight was THE weekend playground for neighborhood kids. My favorite memory of that time was in the early stages when there were just big mounds of dirt pushed around during the leveling of the lot phase. One Sunday afternoon, by myself, I walked up there and worked my poor little body HARD in order to put boards and big limbs connecting those piles. I pretended the big dirt mounds were the continents, and I had just built bridges between the continents. I spent that whole afternoon walking on my bridges from mound to mound pretending I was exploring the world. I was bummed when the next Monday the construction workers "messed up my world." lol

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  18. THIS!!!!!!!

    http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q68/pepsibookcat/happyinPC.jpg

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    1. Truly awesome stories, Rigel! Thanks for these sweet memories. And another GREAT photo!!! Rollerskating cutie :)

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  19. Carefree abandon? No, I don't believe I had that, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't my parents' fault. My younger brother went everywhere and did everything he could think of as a child. He'd play with the neighbors, and be gone all day, it seems. Momma and Daddy were somewhat protective- they wanted to know where we were and who we were with, and as long as they did know that they were okay. But I don't remember having any grand adventures like that, or roaming the neighborhood or anything like that. Even as a child, I didn't like venturing too far from home and I didn't want to have too much to do with people, especially people I didn't know. What I do remember is spending a lot of time in the back yard, where Daddy had put up a neat swingset and slide, and built an absolutely marvelous playhouse (think tree house without the tree). It was the coolest thing- a house just our size, with windows and a door and even a wee little porch, and perfect for anything my imagination came up with. Perfect for a little girl who didn't want to wander...

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    1. Yes! Our specific personalities will always impact our ideas of blissful abandon, won't they? You clearly got your perfect environment -- which sounds amazing, btw. I always wanted one of those little playhouses (my wild forest was often a make-believe home, as opposed to, say, a wild forest :) )

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    2. It was amazing, Barb, and I loved that Daddy built it himself. What's even more amazing is that it's still in our backyard now, and it looks just as neat. I'll have to put up some pictures of it one day...

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  20. Oh, and I finally got to see Trust us with your Life. Tha's a damn funny show they've got there! :)

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