![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I Like Ike
Sep. 11th, 2012 07:30 amA friend, who also grew up in Maryland, turned 60 today. I turned 60 just a month ago. This set me to thinking about the background of my childhood. With both of us growing up in Maryland, it does give us some commonality of perspective, although I was closer to DC and did things like rolling Easter Eggs on the White House lawn (with what now seems an AMAZING lack of security) and my church choir singing on the Ellipse when the national Christmas tree was lighted (Ike and Mamie were there, too, with another total lack of security).
In general my childhood seems a time of absolutely amazing freedom. In the summer, I went out and played. I didn't have to be back for lunch, but I did need to be back and cleaned up to do my chores before dinner at 5. I read, I biked, I played in the woods and by the creek, I played with friends, I spent hours at the library and at the rec center, and no one at home (my grandmother and a maid) knew where I was. Where any of us were! There were no cell phones, no beepers, no geotracking - just endless summer.
In the summer, as a special treat, my brothers and I (individually or together) would take a bus downtown from the suburbs and meet my mother at her office on Lafayette Park for lunch. Sometimes we would get to see a movie downtown in the afternoon or go to the museums, sometimes we would take the bus back after lunch. I was doing this on my own (without a brother) certainly by the time I was ten. The summer I was eleven, just before my family moved to Texas, I used to bus downtown a couple days a week and wander around the various parks and museums. Would anyone let an eleven year old girl do that now? There was one park where all the squirels were black. I got very familiar with the Smithsonian castle and with the Natural History museum and had my favorite hidden spaces to curl up and read a book. I started carrying a purse that summer, a little soft leather over-the-shoulder bag with fringe at the bottom, just so I could put a book in it.
From the time I was five or six, I walked to the theatre on a Saturday afternoon - usually with a brother or two - and watched a double feature matinee with lots and lots of cartoons in between. I'm sure now that it was a way to get the kids out of the house for an extended period of time. Some of the movies were grand, some were definitely inappropriate and scary. I remember spending time in the ladies room (which had a little lounge with a couple of comfy chairs and a fringed ottoman) when the movie was too scary. I met, talked, and played with loads of kids at the theatre that I had never seen before and never saw again. Apparently, in those days, everyone sent their kids to the movies on Saturday afternoon.
In modern terms, I define my childhood as one of benign neglect. It was many years before I realized that. I was in 7th grade before it hit me, like a freight train, when talking with a classmate, that other parents went to the movies WITH their children. I couldn't imagine it. I remember going to only two movies with my mother in my entire childhood. One was BAMBI on my third birthday, and one was HELEN KELLER in that glorious summer I was eleven and before we moved to Texas. Looking back, I see a lot of things I missed out on living in a separate world from my parents, but would I change it for a modern monitored existance? Not on your life.
In general my childhood seems a time of absolutely amazing freedom. In the summer, I went out and played. I didn't have to be back for lunch, but I did need to be back and cleaned up to do my chores before dinner at 5. I read, I biked, I played in the woods and by the creek, I played with friends, I spent hours at the library and at the rec center, and no one at home (my grandmother and a maid) knew where I was. Where any of us were! There were no cell phones, no beepers, no geotracking - just endless summer.
In the summer, as a special treat, my brothers and I (individually or together) would take a bus downtown from the suburbs and meet my mother at her office on Lafayette Park for lunch. Sometimes we would get to see a movie downtown in the afternoon or go to the museums, sometimes we would take the bus back after lunch. I was doing this on my own (without a brother) certainly by the time I was ten. The summer I was eleven, just before my family moved to Texas, I used to bus downtown a couple days a week and wander around the various parks and museums. Would anyone let an eleven year old girl do that now? There was one park where all the squirels were black. I got very familiar with the Smithsonian castle and with the Natural History museum and had my favorite hidden spaces to curl up and read a book. I started carrying a purse that summer, a little soft leather over-the-shoulder bag with fringe at the bottom, just so I could put a book in it.
From the time I was five or six, I walked to the theatre on a Saturday afternoon - usually with a brother or two - and watched a double feature matinee with lots and lots of cartoons in between. I'm sure now that it was a way to get the kids out of the house for an extended period of time. Some of the movies were grand, some were definitely inappropriate and scary. I remember spending time in the ladies room (which had a little lounge with a couple of comfy chairs and a fringed ottoman) when the movie was too scary. I met, talked, and played with loads of kids at the theatre that I had never seen before and never saw again. Apparently, in those days, everyone sent their kids to the movies on Saturday afternoon.
In modern terms, I define my childhood as one of benign neglect. It was many years before I realized that. I was in 7th grade before it hit me, like a freight train, when talking with a classmate, that other parents went to the movies WITH their children. I couldn't imagine it. I remember going to only two movies with my mother in my entire childhood. One was BAMBI on my third birthday, and one was HELEN KELLER in that glorious summer I was eleven and before we moved to Texas. Looking back, I see a lot of things I missed out on living in a separate world from my parents, but would I change it for a modern monitored existance? Not on your life.
