What part of your childhood do you miss the most?
Submitted by Maretta.
As I watch the world go by and I see the crap that I need to protect Kiddo from and the stuff I can't protect her from and she has to deal with on her own, it makes me realize how much better the world was 20-some years ago.
When I was growing up, we had an innocence and a freedom that just isn't afforded the youth of today. My brother and I were the only black kids around yet we were treated just like everyone else (for the most part). We didn't lock our doors or our cars and we could walk around our neighborhood without fear of rapists or killers.
So yeah, I miss that innocence. The spontaneity of getting up and just doing whatever, whenever. The freedom to sleep late and stay up late to play hide and go freeze or release or HORSE, or peg or any other ridiculous game we made up.
I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Toys R Us kid.
Yeah, I'd love to believe the world isn't getting worse and that the only reason it seems that way is because we have such ready access to information and news. But that doesn't explain what's happened to my childhood neighborhoods. I wouldn't want to go to some of those places as an adult now!
It's a shame that kids don't really get to be kids so much any more. I haven't been back to my childhood neighborhood in 7 years. I keep waffling between wanting to go back and not wanting to go back. So many of those people have never left the area, never seen another state, let alone the world. I do know that they are getting to raise their children in a much nicer place than Miami though.
I remember playing kick the can until late into the night. It seems that the neighborhood kids are all kept so busy with extracurricular activities, they don't even know each other anymore.