5 Things Your Parents Did (They'd Be Arrested For Today) | Cracked.com

5 Things Your Parents Did (They'd Be Arrested For Today) | Cracked.com

When I was a kid between the ages of nine and twelve, my summer day went like this from Monday until Saturday:

I was up at dawn, ate a bowl of cereal, got my mitt, and drove off in my bike. I'd play baseball with my friends in the morning, then Mike Dwyer and I would ride our bikes around the local park and the local amusement park, looking for deposit bottles. I lived very near to the junction of Lake Ontario and Irondequoit Bay, a popular recreation area, so both parks were close enough that we would not have to drive more than two miles from the place we played ball. We'd typically make about a buck apiece, more on Monday or after a big holiday, less after a rainy day. In those days, a dollar could buy a hot dog ($.25), a small Coke ($.12 including a two-cent deposit), two comic books ($.10 each), and about eight packs of baseball cards ($.05 each). After lunch and a quick rest to digest our new reading and trading material, we'd resume our baseball games in the afternoon and play until sunset.

On a rainy day, we'd go to someone's house and play some indoor games, or we'd get into a session of discussing and swapping comics and baseball cards.

When I got to high school age, things didn't change much, except that I rode my bike to the local golf course instead of a baseball field. I'd be at the course all day, so there would be no opportunity to collect bottles. I worked in a burger joint at night, while one friend was a manual pinsetter at a bowling alley, and another had a paper route. That was just to cover lunches, because we didn't really need any money for golf. We combed the local course for lost balls, my parents bought me a cheap set of starter clubs, and the annual pass for our local public course set us back a whopping $1.50. The equivalent price for adults was fifteen bucks. That's right, you could pay those paltry amounts in April, then walk the course for fifty cents per round every day of the week until October. And that course was originally designed by Robert Trent Jones, although his layout was modified over the years! The same annual pass exists today, but the price has gone up a bit - $30 for juniors, $450 for adults, $60 for seniors. (That's still a helluva deal! If you play as many rounds as we did back then, about a hundred per year, it works out to $4.50 per round for adults, thirty cents for kids, sixty cents for seniors!)

Rain or shine, my parents didn't see me or have any contact with me in the summer until suppertime, unless I happened to cross their paths in the morning before they went to work. I saw them and my sister on Sunday, when we'd do family things together, and in the evenings, when we might visit relatives or watch TV together. My life was not exceptional among suburban white families. That's the way parenting worked back then. Family life wasn't that different in winter, except that we kids spent the day in school instead of at the sandlot.

It's an oft-repeated cliche to say that life was simpler in the past, but I suppose it has become a cliche because it is essentially true. I chose the word "simpler" rather than "better." In the modern world, science has conquered most childhood diseases, allowed us to become connected 24/7, and given us a wider range of opportunities in almost every field of human endeavor. We have made social progress as well, in terms of greater equality for women, minorities and the handicapped. It seems that everything should be better now, and maybe most of it is.

But perhaps not the quality of childhood.