Childhood Trama

When I was a kid, we would hop on our Huffy's right after our healthy breakfast of some overly sweetened cereal (guaranteed to bring you a severe low sugar crash by 10:30 am!) or english muffins (Thomas's, of course) and be on those damn bikes until around lunch time. We would then eat, drink our Kool-Aid (we had the most AWESOME Mom, ALWAYS bought brand name), hop back on said bikes and repeat until dinner. Usually baths were then forced on us, unless we convinced another mom to take us for the night or convinced ours to have a friend sleep over.

I still remember the cold of my pink banana seat first thing in the morning, and how hot it became after lunch. We would fall off our bikes all the time, get all scraped up, and whatever mom or older, responsible sibling was closest would slap a band-aid on the ouchie and we would be on our way. There was no calling your parents if you got hurt. Oh no, that was saved for when you caught flipping off cars at the end of your street or swore within earshot of sensitive mom ears. Or putting smoke bombs under your sisters door with your best friend and setting the carpet on fire. You know who you are.

I guess my rambling point is, we did not just sit inside. I did not know another kid who just sat inside (except for the Jones kids in the house that always had people moving in and out of it, and they were weird) without being grounded and we had to be forced inside, because there is nothing more interesting than a dead frog or a whole hot wheels town in dirt or climbing a tree or digging fox holes in the paths in the woods. Then, of course, covering up fox holes with twigs and leaves, hiding behind a tree and hoping that your big brother and his friends would step in it, therefore getting revenge for aforementioned smoke bombs. We played. All day long. All night long if you let us. Other people watched out for us. Our parents watched out for other kids. And I wish it was the same for my kids.

I realized I live in a much larger town than the one I grew up in. And I also realize that it was not ideal all the time. Everyone was in everyone's business, broken bones were commonplace, and helmets were unheard of. Bullies weren't dealt with then like they are now, you were just told to deal with it. And we knew to stay away from the creepy old man up the street, because he was, indeed, a creepy old man.

Times have changed, you have to keep on constant alert for perverts, drunk and/or reckless drivers and various people who somehow want to sell your children drugs or get them hooked on cigarettes or sell them to overseas perverts who will get them strung out on drugs and cigarettes. Hey, I watched my fair share of after school specials and 20/20. Which is probably responsible for my generations paranoia.

Anyway, I had to force my children to play outside the other day. FORCE them to. Granted, there was a Scooby Doo marathon on. But I put my foot down. TV off. Quinn picked up a book. Ella started coloring. I finally went out back and set them up an obstacle course, which they quickly abandoned and started their own game of chasing each other, looking for bugs, playing with sticks, using rocks as currency and trying to tackle me as often as possible. You know, the way it should be.

And today, when I asked my kids what they wanted to do, the first thing they said was, "Will you come out and play with us, Mom?"

I still have the warm fuzzies.