Ah, memories, lighting the corners of our minds. A boomer reminisces at IRememberJFK about playing with hyper-realistic looking cap guns, and more specifically, whacking at a whole roll of caps with a hammer. At Electric City Weblog, Gen X-er Hawkeye waxes nostalgic about getting stabbed with lawn darts and other dangerous childhood games that we'd never, ever let our kids play today.
Half of my husband's stories about childhood end with someone being flung over the handlebars of a BMX bike (helmets? Ha!), while in the early 1980s I was letting myself into the house with my own key (on a string around my neck, of course) and making Spaghetti-O's for dinner--I had to stand on a footstool to reach the stove knobs, since I was only eight. I know eight-year-olds today who aren't allowed to touch the can opener without supervision, much less the stove.
I find myself so torn between wanting my children to have some of the benign neglect that was such a large part of childhood when we were kids and needing to conform to a socially approved level of supervision. What's stopping me? Social pressure to hover? Sky-high insurance premiums? I already know from parenting forums that I'm a rare bird for allowing my preschoolers to play in the back yard alone. Their own fully-fenced back yard! Letting them run across the street to play with the neighbor kids would be totally unacceptable unless I made calculated efforts to befriend the parents and oversee the proceedings. And it shouldn't have to be that complicated. It's not like the neighbor kids have lawn darts.
