Earnest Talks

Don’t speak to strangers! Don’t go out unless one of us is with you! Don’t cross that street alone! Don’t play with that …, it’s dirty! Don’t… Don’t… One of the most repeated words heard by a child today is don’t. There are such a wide range of don’ts that I couldn’t begin to repeat them all here.

I also grew up with don’ts. Don’ts like “don’t be late for dinner.” “Don’t go so far that you can’t hear me.” (I could hear my mother’s “EARNEST” from two or three blocks away. Maybe she was using the nearby hills to amplify her voice.) Don’t stay outside past your bedtime. Don’t forget to put your coat on before you go out in the snow.

Unfortunately, many of today’s don’ts are really necessary because of the risks to children that weren’t so prevalent when I was a child. Today more children disappear. Traffic is so much heavier. More people prey on children. Sure there were a few people that seemed too interested in us but we recognized them as “scarey” and stayed away from them.

I was talking with my son recently and could hear in his voice the sadness he has about how few of us know our neighbors. We’ve lost one of the primary things that kept me safe as a child. I knew all of the neighbors for blocks around and they knew me (not always a blessing.) My parents knew them, also, and knew that all of the parents kept an eye on all of the children in the neighborhood. A “neighborhood watch” before we knew what that meant.

I’m still not sure how I survived to adulthood, though. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have danger around us. Things like the coal trains that we liked to hang onto when they were going into the nearby rail yard. Or hanging onto the bumpers of cars and sliding on our leather soled shoes (didn’t take long to wear them out!) Or walking without escort into the local glass factory to watch the glassblowers work. Or watching the enormous saws ripping logs into lumber at the local lumber mill and then climbing the stacks of raw lumber. It is a miracle that I made it this far!

More than dangers, though, we had freedom and joy and closeness and trust. In the summer we didn’t stop playing until dark. We wandered the hills that were close to my house. We climbed the sandstone cliffs (about 20 feet high) and slid back down them. We sat in trees and ate apples and cherries as we picked them (and often paid with digestive issues.) I remember sitting in the street building dams in the gutter when it rained. Today, being in the gutter has very negative connotations. MY gutters were places to recreate the magnificent hydroelectric dams that I read about. And then I got to (figuratively) blow them up and watch the water rush towards the unsuspecting ants down the street.

I know we’ll never go back to those days but I surely enjoy remembering them for me, my kids, and both of my blog readers. I wonder, however, if we are slowly losing the adventurous spirit that grew in me and my friends during those carefree days. As they say back home, “it’s hard to tell”.