Days Gone By

I was sitting in one of my fav hangouts the other night, I think its more a fav place to hangout because of the company I usually keep when I am there, and I was watching the Lightning play and got to talking to George and Fred about how things were when we were growing up and what we did for fun. Things were so different. I was growing up in Connecticut and was about 8 or 9. My older brother and I would get to driving my mother nuts so she would basically throw some brown bags together and tell us to get out of the house. It also meant don't come home for awhile. When this happened we would usually go next door and grab Kevin and Lisa and then another house down and grab Ron. Off the five of us would go for the days adventure. We would wander down the road about a mile or so, then up the hillside, scale the 15 foot cliff and head into the woods. Now the woods seemed to go on forever. We had our options of going anywhere, any direction. We would usually visit our old discoveries and then venture off to find some new fantastic world. We had found an old abandoned house, a small clearing, with all kinds of large boulders protruding from the ground, and a meadow with tall, tall grass that was great for hiding. This particular day we went toward a path we had never noticed before. It wound through the trees and up another hill and eventually opened up to a small graveyard. This graveyard was different, It was not the huge marble stones you usually saw but the headstones were all wood or flat grey slate. Most were tattered and worn. Now this was really cool to a bunch of 8, 9 and 10 year olds. We checked the dates and I remember us being amazed because they went back to the 1860's.
We stayed out all day, laying in the grass, climbing the rocks, playing hide and seek, and discovering so much that was in our back yard. We spent the day outdoors, with our friends, talking and laughing and enriching our minds. We got exercise. Breathed in clean air. Learned how to talk with others and learned to use our imaginations. We were explorers. As kids we had fun. We entertained ourselves for an entire morning and afternoon. And my mom, well, she got peace and quiet.
I think back to the wonder that we found in the world around us. We didn't have video games and only had 5 channels on TV. Can our children not learn this world that we came to know because of all the electronic doodads that we have given them, or is it because we no longer can tell our 8,9 and 10 year olds to skidaddle for the day, outside, unsupervised? Is there too much evil that lurks around the corner to hurt them? Would HRS be on our asses?? These day long journeys were some of the best times I can remember. As a 9 year old it was freedom from the reins of my parents and it was an adventure because no one was telling me that climbing the cliff was too dangerous. It was food for my brain and an understanding of the world around me that my son will never have. I don't take trips back to my childhood haunts. I like remembering the way they were. 30 some years of progress would only destroy the pleasure I still find in those memories.