Where Have All the Little Kids Gone?
One day, I looked up and realized I no longer had little kids. Neither did my friends. We lived solidly in the realm of tweendom.
The Carefree Summers I Had As A Child Are Gone
I’m a bit sad my daughter won’t have the kind of carefree childhood I recall. There was a certain magic to being a kid in a world where everything wasn’t served with a side of warning, and one wasn’t tethered to some form of electronic device at all times. Moms felt comfortable yelling from the back porch out into the wilderness, knowing their kids would come home, worried less about organic foods, or the latest rise in Lyme’s Disease.
A summer day in my childhood went something like this:
Mom makes pancakes and scrambled eggs while my brother and I watch cartoons in the morning. After a while she tells us to go play, and we head out into the woods behind our backyard. It’s a forest to our young eyes. Our sunscreen-free skin lightly toasted in the light, exposed to ticks, poison ivy, and other dangers, but we don’t think about it at all.