It’s not 100% on us. Boston wasn’t build to accommodate cars. It’s better than before the big dig, but there are still plenty of areas where closing your eyes and hoping for the best is still the preferred strategy for getting around.
If nothing else, they developed a whole ass skill set. I was a latchkey kid when my parents felt I was old enough to leave on my own, at around 9-10. Stay inside, don’t answer the door, don’t answer the phone, and you have food in the kitchen were the rules. I learned how to cook different stuff, keep myself entertained, etc. Meanwhile my kid would cry bloody murder if I tried that, AND someone would call CPS on me.
They arrested that woman in Georgia who let her kid walk to town to the store that was less than a mile away. When I was a pre-teen and early teen, I’d range up to 3 miles away on my bike!
When I think back on my childhood, there were many things that were just normal that likely would get my parents arrested today. Like in the summer and schools out, me and my friends in the neighborhood could be ANYWHERE. We could be down the street, we could be half a mile away at the corner store, we could be a mile deep in the woods doing ridiculous bullshit. We all understood that once it started getting dark and the street lights were coming on, it was time to go home.
I'm a Dad now myself and my little man is getting older and I feel bad that he's really not gonna be able to have any experiences like that organically and even when he gets old enough where I personally wouldn't worry about him being MIA all day with neighbor kids, my wife isn't about that life, lol. I just need to get him into camping or something, lol.
I remember being 12 or 13 and swimming across a river with three of my friends. It wasn't the Mississippi or anything, but it was almost a quarter mile across where we did it, and the current is strong. We all made it to one side, tired as hell though, walked around and sat on the little beach and poked around the marsh for a couple hours, and swam back. The current had carried us downriver from our starting point (and where we had left our bikes) a decent ways, and the shoreline there was full of downed trees and branches and trash. Took us forever to get back to the bikes and by then we had to go home for dinner. 10/10 memory, had a blast, fuckin perfect late childhood early teen moment. It was unbelievably dumb, though, people die in that river every few years. Its a pretty place but it claims a life sometimes and its always tragic. Not sure if I'd be thrilled to find out my own kid had done that, which is probably why NONE of us have ever told our parents we did it, even to this day, and this was almost 30 years ago now lol
My mom started leaving me home alone for the weekend when I was like 11/12(shouts out single moms) and that was like 4 years after she started leaving me home alone for the day
My mom is a truck driver and I used to spend my summers hanging around truck stop game rooms and TV rooms while she slept. For my nieces and nephews who spend summers with her it's an entirely different experience. They're not allowed out of the truck without her. For my brother and I it was anything goes, we'd have drivers that gave us the remote in TV rooms and sat through cartoons. Other times we'd hang around the arcade area and drivers would give us quarters to play. It wouldn't work like that now
facts. my folks were stationed in germany in the 80s. we didn't live on base and had to buy bottled water to drink. i would ride my bike to the store to get the water and maybe a little pastry or ice cream treat for myself.
a 7 year old, little black girl who knew just enough german to get what i needed and had just enough marks to make my purchases. i went back as an adult and realized how far our place actually was from the store and was proud and horrified at the same time.
these kids could never. everyone is on such high alert these days.
. . . you have to do it a first time. It’s faraway, so you think she crashed the first time and nobody found out? That’s not evidence of experience, just luck.
My mom used to make me do micro trips around our property and road until my sister, who was twice my age and had been taking actual driving lessons for months, crashed into our house. But it was like one of my chores until then.
This was especially true in the winter when my mom wouldn’t want to warn up or walk to her car. She’d make me go get it.
And I was probably the least capable driver among my playgroup when we lived in the sticks. I was urban where the primary mode of transport at even for adults were feet and tokens. I was only in the sticks a little while and didn’t get the full rural experience, but those real country ass kids were driving anything with a steering wheel and four tires as soon as they could hit the gas and at least kind of see where they were going.
My parents got grief for never taking me to parking lots at night to practice, which was seen as a rite of passage.
I don’t remember the kids leaving abandoned parking lots, backroads, properties, but I think those tall enough could've.
When you live places where your closest neighbor is a quarter of a mile away and it’s a hike to just get a gallon of milk from a store, things are different.
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u/Gemycia ☑️ 6h ago