What did you do as a teen/kid that parents today would have a fit if they knew you did it. Mine---sliding down huge

[moose65]

39. Riding bikes after school

I was a kid in the mid-70s. I can remember getting home from school at about 3:30 in the afternoon. My dad didn't get home till around 4, and my mom got home a bit after 5 (Grandparents were our neighbors so they "watched" us). On warm days, I would go bike-riding with a friend of mine from "down the road."

We didn't wear helmets or use any kind of equipment, of course. We would ride on these little country roads that were paved but were not high traffic areas, and we would usually end up at a little store that was probably 3 or 4 miles away. My parents and grandparents had no idea where I was on those afternoons.

In the summer, we would play softball and go wading in the local creek, but again with no parents around. I can remember hiking through the woods and up on the "mountain" as we called it - foothills really! Nobody's parents really knew what we were doing or where we were, really. It's not that they were "bad parents" or anything. It was just a different time, and they didn't have a GPS attached to us at every moment!

I can also remember when we went to the "city." Our city was Winston-Salem, where my dad worked in a factory. It was about 45 minutes away. Sometimes we would go pick him up at work (he rode in a carpool) and then we would go to Hanes Mall for the evening, and they would turn me loose and I would roam around for a couple of hours on my own. That was fun, and my parents had no way to contact me to tell me they were ready to leave. We just arranged a meeting time and a place! I remember feeling like I was independent while roaming the mall!