\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0We kept our grandson, my namesake, for a few days last week, and the visit reminded me of the world around me when I was around his age.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Wanting to please his grandparents, Arthur asks permission to play, say, across the field. Permission granted, just check in every hour. Instead, he checks in every half hour, “just so you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0By contrast, a constant playmate of his simply shows up at our house. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no trouble at all \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in fact Arthur looks forward to her visits \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but her mother, I suspect, makes a dozen calls when night falls to find out whose house she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been visiting.<\/p>\n
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0As grandparents are we needlessly cautious? Shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s formative years be like those of Scout and her friends, all of whom had the run of the town, worry-free, in “To Kill a Mockingbird”?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0My early years in Las Vegas were different, in a lot of fronts. On the one hand, parents seemed anxious to send us off to school and to our part-time jobs. Yet, we needed to be able to account for every second we spent out of our parents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sight.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0When I was 11, I was part of armies of youngsters allowed to go out and get jobs. We got pep talks about how much fun it would be to buy our own clothes and school supplies; accordingly, I used to set pins at the bowling alley and sell papers.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Girls \u00e2\u20ac\u201d many of them around the neighborhood, not just my sisters \u00e2\u20ac\u201d earned spending money through housecleaning and babysitting.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0What makes the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc50s seem different was the fact that we had the run of the town. There was little opportunity for “quality time” with family. Many of my peers went straight to their part-time school after hearing the last bell at Immaculate Conception School.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0In spite of spending several daylight hours away from family, we still remained in our mothers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 cross-hairs. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how they did it. How did they keep track of everything we did without witnessing any of it?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0A movie, “How to Murder Your Wife,” with Jack Lemmon and Virna Lisi, demonstrates the kind of leverage some people have. In one scene, a female friend of the newlyweds shows how she keeps rein over her husband, at the time in another room, minding his own business. “I heard that,” she hollers through the closed door.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The penitent, confused spouse responds, “Oh, Sweetheart, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really mean that” to an accusation that she merely imagined and that he never committed but apologized for anyway. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how my mother was. If she figured I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d gone too many days without getting into trouble, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d surmise something was amiss and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d confront me with the accusatorial guilt by assassination.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The dialogue often went like this:
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0“What have you been doing?”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0“Oh, nothing much, Mom.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0“Well, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not what I heard. Care to explain?”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0“Well, whoever told you I was horsing around playing pinball machines was lying.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0“Oh, so you were malingering, being a good-for-nothing.” Then she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d punctuate it with, “\u00c2\u00bfQue dira la gente?” And she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ask that question as if all of the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s denizens were crystallized, every one in a collective gasp over whatever crime they surmised I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d committed.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0At the time I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give much thought to what neighbors might think, what with my being too busy saving my hide to care about public perception. Sometimes I wondered whether Mom was just honing her skills, practicing for the main event. Was she merely rehearsing a scene from a movie, “Pay it Forward,” which wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t produced until five decades later? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a safe guess that Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s third-degree guilt-by-accusation technique was her way of “banking” future retribution.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0If I could have absolutely proved \u00e2\u20ac\u201d through the testimony of six nuns in a station wagon \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that it was someone else who bounced dried peas off the classroom ceiling so they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d land on Sister Mary DiPazzi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desk during study hall, it wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have mattered. The fact is, it was Wilfred who silently flicked the peas to land on the teacher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desk, but from my desk there was a better trajectory. And since any pea originating from my desk could certainly have hit the target, naturally, I was presumed guilty. Guilt by implication.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Even if I proved I was innocent, the “could have” assumption then kicked in. Mom would reason that “then you admit that it would have been possible to flick those peas on her desk?”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0“Well yes, Mom, I guess anything\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Gotcha! This way of storing up punishment possibly worked for her. So the next time I was culpable, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d cut me some slack? Yeah, right.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible life in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc40s came replete with constant attitude adjustments performed by parents but precipitated by concerned neighbors who never failed to report us, “just for our own good.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Somehow we survived despite the lumps. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting to ponder the ways in which lives have been transformed. Back then, we all had a pair of shoes and\/or a bike; today, kids too old to be chauffeured by a soccer mom cruise around instead.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Back then, when the pedestrian business district consisted of Douglas Avenue and Bridge Street, the likelihood of meeting many people was much greater than it is today, when on any Saturday afternoon it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible to pitch a tent on Douglas.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Our childhoods, for those of us who remember the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc40s and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc50s, were no different. In essence, we were children just like children today. We liked to run and play, talk about our friends, hang out and even squabble.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0But today children are groomed, scheduled and psychoanalyzed hour by hour. Yesterday, there was a newspaper article about students fighting to regain a few minutes of recess, which has been pre-empted by extra testing.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I wonder what memories our grandchildren they will have of their childhoods when they are in their 60s. No doubt the behavior of the adults in their lives will seem inexplicable.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0And I assume when my grandson reaches my current age, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll want to tell his own grandkids about the olden days. And will they say, “Oh, Grandpa, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard that story before”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0We kept our grandson, my namesake, for a few days last week, and the visit reminded me of the world around me when I was around his age. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Wanting to please his grandparents, Arthur asks permission to play, say, across the field. Permission granted, just check in every hour. Instead, he checks in every half […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}