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It's funny when people yell about kids being on IPads and phones, when they played video games and watched TV all day when they were kids. Or even better, just go outside and play with your friends. Do you remember what we did outside with our friends? Here's my list:

Set fires, lots of them.

Climbed around in culverts

Vandalized

Found porn in the woods

Trespassed

Jumped out of barn lofts

Tried not to get gored by bulls

Cow pattie fights

Ran the hose for hours and turned my brother onto Swamp Thing by covering him with mud and leaves

mizblueprint

@RickiTarr
We played "pretend" all the time. Pirates, hurricanes, wagon train, prison, submarines (we literally dug a grave, put plywood over it, and used a cardboard golf viewer as a conning tower), ball games, bicycle tricks, roller skates (knocked out my neighbor's front teeth when I was bike towing him on skates & he tripped on a rock), flood (built a dam), witches and fairies (witches bad, fairies good), starvation (making food from mud and acorns)...endless list...

@RickiTarr
My mom was old school. When she had had it, she'd put the six of us out of the house, lock the door, and say, "don't come home till dark."

@RickiTarr @mizblueprint

I honestly sometimes feel like this is the strongest argument I have against car centered cities.

Why are your kids in your house, in your hair, screaming and making a mess? Cause if you send them outside on the street they’ll get run over. How great would it be if that were not the case?

@Jackiemauro @RickiTarr @mizblueprint I mean, we walked through areas with snakes, messed with fire, etc etc. Remove the cars from the equation and you still have just as much danger if not even more.

@nazokiyoubinbou @RickiTarr @mizblueprint

Idk I would much rather my kid tangled with a snake than an F150

@Jackiemauro @RickiTarr @mizblueprint Kids aren't quite as dumb as you think they are. They don't go jumping out in front of cars or something. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying that this is just not the argument against them that you think it is.

(To be clear, I'm also all for scaling down use of private vehicles and scaling up better alternatives. I just mean you can't really say it removes all danger because kids will just swap one for another.)

I don't want to get too much into this with this account though.

@Jackiemauro @RickiTarr @mizblueprint It’s when kids just can’t independently go to their friends, when an adult is needed to drive anywhere outside the home, it severely limits what a kid can do independently. It’s essentially that kids explore independently

@pinhman @Jackiemauro @RickiTarr
I raised my own kids on a busy street a few blocks from "downtown". When they were 9-10 I allowed them to cross the even busier street to go downtown by themselves. Some of their friends (brought over by other Moms) had never walked anywhere. They were amazed. Bookstores, Claire's Boutique, clothing stores, Ben & Jerry's, antiques, junk stores, a grocery store, alleys, skate park, river access. No parental supervision. I did have "eyes on the street", though.

@pinhman @Jackiemauro @RickiTarr
They had to walk by City Hall, the police and fire stations, the city offices, my hairdresser, numerous shopkeepers...if they only knew how well they had been supervised.

@Jackiemauro @RickiTarr @mizblueprint my preteen nephew goes to school two miles away and can’t ride his bike because there are too many kids hit by cars on the route.

@Bronwyn @RickiTarr @mizblueprint

😢 that’s horrible. It’s so upsetting to me what we’re willing to steal from our children so people can get around town a little faster and without having to interact with each other.

@Jackiemauro @RickiTarr @mizblueprint it made me so sad. And him and his parents too; they all would have liked it.

@Bronwyn
My kids couldn't walk the five blocks to school like I did when I was their age because child predators... Literally every other year a note would come from the school about someone trying to snatched a kid

Once, I scared off a car with two dudes in it who stopped in front of the house to chat with my six year old daughter!

That shit didn't happen when I was her age (well, no one knew about it, anyway)
@Jackiemauro @RickiTarr @mizblueprint

@DelilahTech @Bronwyn @Jackiemauro @RickiTarr
We rode our bikes or walked in a big gang to school. Times have changed, for sure. I like the newer bicycle busses for kids to ride to school in a big crowd with parent supervision.

@Bronwyn @DelilahTech @RickiTarr @mizblueprint

My understanding is that the danger of abduction hasn’t actually increased but the feeling of danger has. But of course it’s always hard to know how much we can learn from just observed crime stats.

But I think the danger from cars is considerably higher.

@mizblueprint
be home *after* the street lights come on.

edit:

"Unless I blow *the horn!*"

@RickiTarr

@mizblueprint Mum would always get mad because we rarely played with our toys as intended