Police Investigate Family for Letting Their Kids Walk Home Alone. Parents, We All Need to Fight Back

[hfojvt]

25. when I was a young lad

my sister and I went walking around my grandparents house. In the fairly big city of Madison, Wisconsin. Grandparents lived on Mifflin street, just one block from the very busy Washington Avenue. We were small town kids, although we had done some camping and travel too, my mom's family being in New York, we'd been there a few times. I was perhaps seven or eight, my sister nine or ten. It seems like I had only recently learned to read, because I was reading every sign I saw - out loud.

So finally we were standing there waiting to cross the busy Washington Avenue, and the light was not changing, and not changing. I am standing there reading signs, and sign, sign everywhere there was a sign. Blocking all the scenery, breaking my mind. Finally my sister had had enough, and she snaps at me "will you quit reading all the stupid signs" just as I happened to read a sign that said "push button for walk signal".

So she was "wait a minute, what did you just say?" I repeated "push button for walk signal". She asked "where did you see that?" So I pointed to the sign I had just read. For some reason, it did not occur to me to press the button myself. Big sister, after all, was leading this expotition. I was just there to read signs.

This was in 1969 or so. Two kids wandering around a big city, a city where they did not even live.

Then again, I remember the first time I went around the block across the street in my hometown. Got to the other side of the block and ran into some kid who threatened to beat me up. I was maybe six.

There also was the time when I was perhaps thirteen, leading my 11 and 10 year old siblings home from the circus, across from the junior high that we all eventually walked to and from, about a mile away. A strange lady stopped and asked if we wanted a ride. I said no, that we would walk. Turns out the lady was our next door neighbor, and I, doofus that I am, did not recognize her. I had been walking from that place since the 5th grade when once I missed my car pool ride after band practice and had to run to the grade school about a mile and a half away, hauling a trumpet.

If it was good enough for me, it's good enough for today's kids.