MUSINGS
By Regena Handy
When my oldest brother was five years old, he would take his little red wagon and walk alone to the store. My dad was working and my mother, who didn’t drive at the time, was at home with a newborn.
Mom would fix a list and off my brother would go—out the long driveway, along the dirt road, around the curve, up the hill and back down to the little country store—about a half mile. He would give Clerk (the name everyone called the owner) the list, who would put the items in his wagon and “jot down” the costs to an account that would be settled later.
Did our mother worry while he was gone? I’m sure she did, for my parents were very protective. But her concern might have been that he would fall into the creek that ran adjacent to the roadway or that a stray dog could bite him. I doubt it crossed her mind that another human being might bother him, for other people would have been considered a source of help, not harm.
This all took place about 1950. Now, fast forward to 2016.
As I’ve mentioned before in my musings, we have a six-year-old grandson. He lives in a small, relatively safe city. He loves school and is a happy little boy. But his parents would no more allow him to walk to the store alone than they would let him drive a car.
In teaching him to be independent, he has just recently begun to go into a public men’s restroom alone, and only then if one of them is nearby. He does not play in the front yard without supervision.
Running to the curb to get the mail is a big deal. Because of traffic, you might wonder. Partially, but mostly the parents’ anxiety is due to the unpredictable temperament of a modern world and its populace.
In my opinion, the loss of childhood innocence is the great tragedy of this country. There are those who disagree, of course, who say that life has always been hard for most of the world, even young children. They believe that such a pure state never existed, that it is all in the mind of those of us who are considered to wear “rose colored glasses.”
I can only address this from the standpoint of which my generation grew up. Being the sheltered only daughter in my family, I probably didn’t have the freedom as my brothers and cousins and neighborhood kids. Yet, there was so much liberty without fear.
Let me reword that, we had the fear our parents put in us if we misbehaved. But many of us spent hours on our own or with siblings, playing in the woods, wading in the creeks, riding bikes for miles to visit our friends. Parents had a vague idea where kids were but so long as they returned at the expected time, no one was bleeding, no limbs were broken, and there was no evidence of misbehavior, we were allowed to be kids.
All of this really came home to me last Friday night. My husband and I were having dinner with our son’s family when the grandson commenced to tell about his day at school.
There had been a lock-down rehearsal that morning. The teacher had showed them where to hide in their room. What they should do just in case—and these are the grandson’s words—“a bad bully came into the school”.
He told all this in a matter of fact manner, as if this is the normal now. And apparently, it is. How my heart aches for him and all the little ones whose innocence is lost at such an early age, who must learn for their own safety sake about demented people, those who willingly destroy others. It truly is a different world from the one in which I grew up.
