[deoetdoctrinae]

I remember riding my bike to the municipal pool on hot summer days and swimming all day long til I looked like a prune.

Nowadays, someone would have my parents arrested for abandoning their child.

[SeaHawkFan]

I remember riding my bike to the municipal pool on hot summer days and swimming all day long til I looked like a prune.

And you didn't put a bike lock on it because no one would steal it.

[21twelve]

Ride bikes to the pool. Did that too - about 3 miles one way through suburbia. On the way home would shoplift a freeze-pop form the corner drug store. That ended in fourth grade when I was going to lift a model airplane and got caught. (I hated building models - but it was a challenge to steal!)

After that I never so much as took a pencil laying on the floor at school.

Did pretty much all of that as a kid.
My kids did too, except for the staying out all day. (I would even go down to the suburban creek about two miles from our house and have an overnight camp - by myself. I suppose that would have been around 6th grade!

When I was almost 16 I spent two weeks in the Tetons hiking by myself - with my parents approval. (Although mom DID get mad when she got a call from the sheriff as I had been picked up for hitch-hiking and they were calling to make sure I wasn't a runaway). I had promised not to hitchhike. Oh well.