So why can't kids walk to school? [View All]

[politicat]

I've lived in some really bad neighborhoods. I lived in the time before stranger danger, when kids were not told to be careful of weirdos in Lincolns offering candy. Heck, my folks got and BELIEVED the Blue Star Acid memo.

And we walked to school. Nothing ever happened - we didn't get run over, beat up, kidnapped, yelled at, picked up by the cops for child endangerment, or anything else. The worst thing we did was buy candy at the little drugstore on the way home and take oranges off of trees that overhung the sidewalks. (The store sold fun size stuff illegally, as well as bucket candy. It's legal to take oranges hanging over the public right of way as long as we didn't damage the tree.) We were latch key kids, and to my certain knowledge, the worst my sisters and I ever did was a little pot and get drunk on mini-bottles of root beer schnapps that my parents had for some reason. (Not me, I hate root beer.) All three of us went to college, though we went on our own time and our own dimes. My parents couldn't afford for my mother not to work, or to take time off to come pick us up (let alone the gas), and she needed me to start supper. Daycare is expensive - once I could be trusted with my sisters (when I was 10 and they were 7 and 4) I picked up the baby on my way home from school and kept an eye on both of them until my parents got home.

Denver-Metro is SAFER than my neighborhoods were: this area has bike lanes, side walks, cross walks, walk signals (and cars MUST stop for pedestrians and people walking their bikes). We have Amber alerts and cell phones now, and most kidnappings are familial, anyway. Drugs are harder to get, more expensive, and booze and cigs are almost impossible for a 22 year old to buy, let alone a 12 year old. Sexual abusers are usually family members, not strangers. And kids are far smarter about dealing with bullies than we were -- bullying wasn't taken seriously even 15 years ago. It is now.

So what has changed? What memo did I miss by not being a parent?