Category Archives: Humor

“The parenting sweet spot exists somewhere between helicopter parent and completely ignoring your kids.”

Yes, I drank my fair share of hose water as a kid. In the 70’s most parents I knew leaned toward the ignoring side. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tried to avoid acknowledging my age here, mostly because I don’t have the maturity of most people my age. I’m not a “Boomer” but I’m in line outside the Boomer stadium. I’m in my 50’s.  I was in my 30’s when I started this blog. That means that I was a child in the 1970’s and 1980’s and we were raised a little differently than other generations. It was a very different time.

My 3rd grade school photo  

This blog post is an ode to a time and a neighborhood that you’ll never see again. I think what says it all for my generation was my parents rule “come home when the streetlights go on.” As a kid, both my parents worked and in the 70’s there was no daycare for kids over 4 years old. During school summer vacation we became feral children. Both parents were gone at work for 9 hours. We had to fend for ourselves. We were the original “latch-key” kids.

I loved the neighborhood I grew up in. It wasn’t exactly suburban. It was kind of between the suburbs of a medium size city and the rural areas. It was a great time to grow up in that neighborhood. It was built in the 1960’s and it was completely middle class.  Because it was a new neighborhood, all of our parents had bought and moved in around the same time in the 1960’s, which meant that they all had kids around the same age.

Me and my friends just hanging out on a normal summer day.

In the summer, the “come home when the streetlights come on” rule meant that we could leave the house in the morning and they didn’t worry too much until it got dark, which was close to 9:30 at night in the summer. To be honest, they weren’t that strict about that streetlight rule because I remember being out roaming the neighborhood after dark quite a bit. But the great part was that we always had friends.

As a feral child in the summers of the 1970’s, these are some of the things that may or may not have happened to me or someone I know. Don’t worry my fellow feral friends from the neighborhood, I’m not going to rat anyone out.

1. Once one of the older kids set up a ramp in the street and convinced nine of us to lay on the ground so he could hit the ramp on his bike and hopefully jump over the nine bodies laying in the street. I was one of those 9 and fortunately he did clear us all. Where the hell were the adults? This happened in broad daylight in the middle of the street. Not a single adult came out to stop us.

This is legitimately very similar to what my basement looked like. My dad built an actual bar in the basement.

2. My parents had 70’s parties with the neighbors in our basement and there was a fair amount of drinking going on and who else knows what. Us kids were told to stay in our room upstairs until the next day. When they weren’t having friends over in our basement, they went out to a bar called (I kid you not) The Pink Pussycat.

Also the first time I got drunk was after one of my parent’s parties when I was 8 years old. After my parents friends left I ventured out of my room and there were several half drank glasses of wine on end tables and chairs, so I drank them. My parents had quite the laugh about their drunk 8 year old. I didn’t have to drive home, so it was all good.

3. Boy on fire: One nice thing about our neighborhood was that it was surrounded by woods on two sides, giving us a wonderful, natural playground. Then one day one of my brother’s friends came running out of the woods with his arm on fire. Fortunately, he only ended up with burns on his arm.

Older brother carrying baby brother on a shoulders

4. It’s all fun and games until someone ruptures an eardrum.: Once when I was 8 years old and my parents were out at The Pink Pussycat, my 12 year old brother was my baby sitter.  We came up with this fun game were I would sit on his shoulders and he’d run through our bedroom door and as we passed through the door, I would grab the half inch wide door frame with my little fingers and swing in the air as he ran out from underneath me. Unfortunately, one time he held my legs a split second too long and I fell off his shoulders and my head hit the ground. Immediately blood began pouring out of my ear. That required a lot of x-rays and a few weeks where I was deaf in one ear. I’m all good now.

I was about to go into the story of how I almost lost my right eye to a giant, Lord of The Rings sword, but this is getting to be a little long. Come back tomorrow for the second installment. Feel free to add your stories in the comments or write your own blog post about your crazy childhood.

Thanks for reading! See you tomorrow ~Phil