Re: An editor offers deep insight into my failures as a writer


Lynn Allen sent the following on 7/24/2009 12:22 AM:
On 2009-07-23 17:11:16 -0700, Mike Burke <mburke@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:

Even at a very early age, ie under 10, we were out of the house and
often literally miles away in deep bushland or roaming the streets in
suburbia.

My husband tells tales of roaming far & wide with his three brothers, when Anaheim was filled with orange groves, and they'd run the tops of fences throughout the neighborhood, the goal being to traverse entire blocks without feet touching ground.

They also rode bikes over to Disneyland and got in with discarded tickets found outside, or begged from exiting patrons. Once again, the only requirement was Be Home By Dark or sometimes by the time the streetlights went on. Apparently the Disney personnel weren't bugged by roaming unaccompanied children.

I spent a lot more time reading as a child than most (go figure) but we too had the streetlight curfew. Otherwise, "don't bother me unless you're bleeding" was the parental mandate.

It is very sad that some people don't feel children can do anything on their own. Perhaps when the child is 45 and still living in the back bedroom they'll see the light.

It seems to me (from a small and anecdotal sample size) that kids are much more of a focal point for their parents now than they were as recently as, say, a quarter-century ago. As a kid, I, for one, knew that my parents loved me, but neither I nor any of my friends or siblings had the sense that we were our parents' reason for being. Our parents didn't obsess over our welfare and activities 24/7, largely because they had lives of their own, as well. As others have pointed out, we were unsupervised for the vast majority of any given day.

With kids today, everything that the parents do from dawn to dusk often seems to revolve around their kids, and the kids seem to be getting an unhealthy, overinflated sense of self, IMHO. All I know is that my parents and all of my friends' parents *always* had time for their own bowling night or golf game or poker night, or whatever. Now, most parents I know (of grade school or high school kids) *rarely* talk to one another unless the conversation involves one of their kids. I blame minivans and soccer. :)

--
Jim Gysin
Waukesha, WI
.

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