"Some days, we’d go exploring in the woods. Our minds full of fantastical stories of bad guys chasing us, we decided we must build a tree house. So we gathered up scrap pieces of old wood, rusty nails pulled out of rotting pieces of equipment, and a hammer someone nicked from their Father’s toolbox. Then we’d nail this crap to a tree. Once the rickety house was complete, we’d climb up in it, careful to hold on to the branches in case the floor gave out beneath us. Then, we’d muse to ourselves that we had not built it high enough.
We built ramps in parking lots and jumped them with every toy we had that sported wheels. Skateboards, bikes, roller skates. We didn’t have helmets or kneepads or elbow pads. It didn’t matter. Sometimes we’d fall and rub the skin completely off of our bodies. Nobody cared.
We’d eat berries and apples from strange trees. We’d ride our bikes 6 miles to the park, alone. And not just any park, either. We went to parks with monkey bars higher than our Dad’s heads and dangled our legs over cement. We sat in puddles full of oil and water and swam in water so dirty it might as well be called sewage. In the summertime, we’d go 6, 7, 8 hours at a time without laying eyes on our parents."
Excerpt from: Childhood: Then and Now
