As I was driving in to sub at the Middle School this morning, I got stuck behind a school bus that stopped at three different houses within sight of the schools, and I started thinking about how easy the parents and the kids have it these days. I know every generation says that, but it really is true these days.
When I was in school, we walked to and from school – getting a ride was a luxury and it was only when we got lucky. I lived about a half a mile walk from my schools all the way through 9th grade. During my high school years, I lived further away from the school, but I rode to school with my dad. There were kids who came to school on buses, but I never knew where they were coming from, if they were coming from schools that were across the city or not, but during those years, the city did have a practice of busing students from across the city in order to promote diversity within the system.
Anyway, back to the earlier years… I usually was able to ride with my dad to get dropped off across the street from my school… unless I was not ready on time. Then, I walked the half mile, and yes, it’s true – I did it in the scorching heat of August and the biting cold of February and everything in between, rain or shine. But! Unlike the generations before mine, we didn’t have to walk uphill backwards in both directions. Somehow the city of Memphis managed to flatten the place out before we came along.
So, I was musing about walking my half mile route, with a full backpack, a purse, and my school-issued French horn that made it look like I was carrying a toilet bowl around. My friends and I would walk up the sidewalk on a busy four-lane street to where we crossed over with the assistance of a crossing guard, and then, when we got to the first house, we split off in different directions to go to our own houses. We did it every day without GPS trackers, phones, or school buses. Those walks were essential to our development as we grew up. We learned to be observant of the things that were going on around us. We came to know what cars we would see driving past us every day, and which ones were out of place. We knew which houses had mean dogs – or worse, mean old people who yelled at us for breathing. We basically ruled our little piece of the world – at least as long as we were outside playing together or walking to and from school, sometimes stopping at the gas station across the street from the school for candy or a drink – until the parents got home.
We learned early about Stranger Danger, and we took it seriously, especially if there was a white van anywhere along the route. It was never the man next door, or the preacher, or a blue van. It was always someone we didn’t know who was in a white van that was going to pull up beside us and open the side door and grab one of us. To this day, many of us won’t walk anywhere near a white van! We didn’t know that the most dangerous people were sometimes the people who were among the most trusted in the community – Even our parents didn’t know!
Even today, I remember one afternoon walking up North McLean to the old railroad bed right at Linden, where we would split off from each other, and I would walk down the railroad bed to my house. Now, there was a strip of grass about twenty feet wide between the railroad bed and the small road that was beside it, and the railroad had been raised some, maybe a five-foot height difference. I was about 13 or 14 years old. It was sunny and warm, but not hot. I saw a burgundy car pass us going the opposite direction. I didn’t get a look at the driver, but I remember the car, and I remember that it circled back around to pass us again. When we got to the railroad bed and split off in different directions, I started off toward my house with a full backpack on my back, and lugging my lunchbox and my ever-present horn, that was not much smaller than I was! I had a weird feeling, that feeling that something wasn’t right, and the little voice inside of me told me to turn around and look behind me… I did, and I saw that same burgundy car on the side road. It had stopped, and a white man had stepped out and was beside it looking at me while he was coming in my direction. I remember it like it was all slow motion… the white button-down dress shirt and the gray pants… he was what I would call “portly” now, but at that age, he was just fat. His hands were near his belt, and I took off in a dead run down the “tracks” for home, horn and lunchbox still in my hands flailing wildly. I remember turning to see if he was chasing me just in time to see him get in that car and hightail it outta there! I remember that Mom was home when I got there that day, so I told her what happened and we called the police, but I don’t think they ever found the car. I do know that I never saw it again, but if you were to ask me, I can tell you that it was a fairly new burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass. Thank fuck I had been given enough freedom to gain some street smarts about me because it’s pretty unlikely that kids who have cell phones with them all the time and are picked up and dropped off at their houses by the school bus every day would ever have that sixth sense about them. I’m not even sure that they know what a sixth sense is!
I’m glad that I wasn’t that sheltered. My mom used to get mad when I would tell her that Steve and I were “feral”, or that we were “raised by wolves”, but I think she finally understands what I mean when I say that, and that it isn’t a diss on her parenting skills at all. In fact, it’s a compliment because without the upbringing that I had, I wouldn’t have developed the resourcefulness to be able to get into the house without a key, or find my way all over the eastern half of the country with a giant book of maps in the passenger seat beside me, and I definitely wouldn’t have the pretty handwriting I have or the ability to read the original Declaration of Independence! I might not have ever seen that burgundy car, but if I had, I probably wouldn’t have been able to recognize the threat it posed.
My poor daughter is absolutely lost without her phone or her GPS. I swear she can’t even remember how to get to school without the GPS. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Of course, I wouldn’t know what to do without her phone either. I can only imagine what it was like to be my mom or dad back when I was in school… watching me leave in a friend’s car or dropping me off at the mall on a Saturday afternoon with no way to get in touch with me once I walked through those big glass doors and into the sea of people… I mean, I am able to find Abby either by calling her or stalking her phone location when she isn’t home.
I can’t help but wonder… is this generation going to keep living at home until they are in their 30s? How will they ever learn independence and resourcefulness if they are constantly sheltered from the world? How will they survive if they have to walk across a college campus because they can’t have a car during their first year and campus transportation isn’t always an option? How will they survive if the cell phone signal is lost while they’re away from home, and how will we? We might not have had it easy as today’s kids or parents, but in the end, I would say we were the lucky ones.
