When I was growing up in the 1970s, I am so glad I was never tethered to a smartphone like the children of today are.
It's hard for children of today to imagine but when I went outside to "play", I would be gone for hours, sometimes the entire day, on my Huffy bike, and my parents would never know who I saw, what I did and where I was. Unless I wanted to tell them.
Freedom!
Yup, me too. It was glorious.
Why Mr Adams, you’re bringing back memories of freedom.
You may have thought they didn't know. After I was grown and had moved out, I was surprised to find out how much my parents had known about what the six of us kids were up to. The neighborhood housewives' surveillance and intelligence network could have taught some things to the KGB and Stasi.
A lot of the time, my parents' attitude was, "Meh, he learned a lesson and didn't suffer permanent harm, so what the hell."
My friends and I did the same. Out the door at 8am and home in time for supper. And if there was daylight left, we’d play some more till twilight ended. Maybe an hour later on the weekends. What a great time it was to be a kid/teen in America.
In the 70’s if I did something stupid 3 blocks away, by the time I pedaled back home my mom knew about it!
We were outside nonstop! Climbing trees was our past time.
We were raised by our parents and our neighbors.
Today kids are raised by social media. That ain’t good.
On weekends or during the summer, I would wake up, make myself cereal, get on my bike and disappear with my friends. As long as I was home by yhe time the street lights came on, nobody cared. That was like a 12+ hour stretch.
Nice I had a bike like the red one with the banana seat but in metallic green. Awesome bike and had baseball cards fluttering in the spokes.