When I Was A Kid

We were free to roam. It wasn’t all that long ago, but when I was growing up in Egg Harbor, by the time I was 8 our days started by hopping on the bike first thing in the morning and ended when we returned at sunset. We roamed for miles, got into occasional trouble – more like mischief, as my mom would call it – played at one friend’s house, then another, checking in rarely. If we wanted to check in, we might sheepishly ask to use the gas station’s phone, or scrounge change for the payphone.

I’m only 30, this wasn’t that long ago. But today, such long un-checked days seem less and less common. Parents buy children cell phones for safety, as if kids were dropping dead left and right before the cell phone companies brought us the cocoon of instant contact, text messages, and GPS locating.

Our continuing quest to shield our children from risk was portrayed vividly a couple weeks ago in the New York Times. The number of kids who walked or biked to school has dropped from 41 percent in 1969 to 13 percent today. Suburbanization has a role to play in that, having spread us further from each other, but it’s also telling that the image of the school day begins less with busses, bikes, or walking down the sidewalk, and more with a line of cars full of kids driven to school by their parents.

Maybe it’s a byproduct of our car-centered world, maybe it’s good practice, or maybe it’s unfounded fear. But as one mother tells us in the article, it’s just not normal to see a kid walking alone down the street anymore.