A long time ago, in a magical land called Yesterday, there lived a little girl called Grandma.
I grew up in a time of scarcity compared to today’s standards. Stores were small, (very few knew what a Walmart was), groceries were basic, and entertainment was whatever you could find, throw, roll, spit, or smash.
Wadding up little pieces of paper and blowing them through a straw while looking the other way afterward could provide hours of entertainment. Of course, if your aim was bad and you didn’t turn around quickly enough to put on your best innocent face and ask, “What? Who did what?”, you might suddenly find yourself in a serious confrontation.
And by serious confrontation, I mean learning how to either talk your way out of a fight or protect your shins.
Television wasn’t widespread in lower-middle-class homes until later. I remember our first set. It was about twelve inches wide, black and white, had no remote, and had a pair of rather pathetic rabbit ears.
But when that little screen came to life, it was magic. Stories appeared right there in our living room, giving us another world to visit from the comfort of our own backsides. And by “our own” I mean the adults at the time. The children were found outside. “Go outside and come back at dark”, was repeated daily.
And so we did.
Growing up Wild
Growing up in the 1970s was about as close to living in the wild as a kid could get.
We knew true freedom.
Cell phones did not exist, nor GPS. Parents didn’t track our every move. Adventure was the name of the game, wandering around the neighborhood on bicycles, climbing trees, building forts or ramps out of scrap wood. We built tree houses out of trash, explored places we probably shouldn’t have, and somehow managed to survive it all, albeit very banged up. Dirt actually does stop bleeding, by the way.
We learned quickly which houses had snacks, which dogs to avoid, which yards belonged to people who would chase you with a broom, and which mothers wouldn’t mind if you came inside to use the bathroom.
We were expected to entertain ourselves. A stick could become a sword, a cardboard box could become a fort, a mud puddle could become an afternoon adventure.
And if we got bored?
We figured something out.
There was no internet waiting to rescue us from boredom. No video games in every bedroom. There was simply the great outdoors and whatever happened to be lying around.
In some ways, we were little versions of Buck from Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.
That book, written long before us, was a familiar part of school reading for many children of our generation. And the idea of leaving the comfort of civilization and learning to survive in the wild somehow seemed perfectly appropriate.
What we learned
We learned through life’s consequences, directly. When something didn’t work right we figured it out, resourceful, unafraid, and resilient. Creativity was never on low supply.
The goal of our parents was not to create independent children. I doubt they gave it a moment’s thought. They were busy with their own aspects of life. We were outside, out of sight and out of mind. It was simply the way things worked.
For some reason whenever our parents looked at us they morphed into horrifyingly fuming trolls. We weren’t stupid. Contact with the parents was to be avoided at all costs. A cold drink from the fridge was not worth the results it brought, not when a garden hose will do just as well. Nobody thought much about it.
We survived.
Looking back, I think the 1970s gave us something that is difficult to recreate today: freedom, boredom, and the opportunity to figure things out for ourselves.
And then as life tends to do………we grew up.
Then we found ourselves being parents
As we became parents, ourselves, we determined to give our own children what we felt we didn’t received. We wanted them to know they were loved, valued, protected, and important.
Maybe we did this a little too well. Because my generation is now hearing from our adult children,
“You don’t exist for us right now.”
But that’s another depressing story.
For now, let’s go back to Yesterday.
It was messy,
wild,
and completely wonderful.
If you ever find yourself wishing you could know what true freedom feels like, come home to Grandma.
I may not be able to take you back to the 1970s…
but I can still teach you a few things about being wild.
Until next time Darling,
Grandma
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