My mom let me do that

Dennis Cheung, formerly of the Microsoft Mac BU, linked to an interesting and randomly personal story today. The article Dennis linked to is on Free Range Kids, and talks about a woman, (I'm guessing, I'm not sure about the gender from the post), who let her kid ride the subway home from Bloomingdale's. It was the boy's request, and she left him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20, and some quarters.

He came home okay. No big deal until you note the headline:

Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone

I'll wait for the screams of horror to calm down.

I read this and thought "I wish this wasn't a big deal, and I bet she's going to catch a lot of crap." The latter is definitely true, and I still wish the first was too, because I was most definitely a "free-range kid" growing up.

In Miami.

Between 1970 and 1986.

Yeah...Mariel, Liberty City Riots, Cocaine Cowboys, the whole bit. That's the Miami I grew up in. If you want, read "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face" by Edna Buchanan. That Miami. In fact, this paragraph from that book is rather personal to me:

Consider this real-life scene: A twenty-two-year-old Miami cop encounters a man strolling at dawn in a quiet neighborhood. The man is naked and carrying the severed head of a young woman. He throws the head at the cop-twice.

"I killed her. She's the devil!" the man shouts.

Actually, her name was Drew. She was young, funny, and profane. I worked with her for a short while at the Coral Gables Bus Terminal newsstand. Her roommate, Tina worked there too. They were both really nice people. Tina especially bewailed that I would never, ever, ever learn how to dress myself worth a damn. I bought a nice suit just to prove her wrong. Drew's boyfriend, who she was living with, went to California, came back crazy. Stabbed her, cut her head off, and then threw her head at a cop.

That's the Miami I grew up in. My folks had no car. I either rode the bus or...well, there was no or. My mom taught me how the bus system worked, and that was that. Bicycle or bus, no other choices. From 9 or 10 until I joined the Air Force and got my first car, that was how I got around one of, and for a while, the most dangerous city around. Nothing bad happened because of the bus. I got hit by cars on 3 separate occasions on my bike, once deliberately, but that can happen no matter how you get around or how old you are.

For me, "the good old days" involved such surrealistic shit that I still can't explain it. You either lived in Miami, or didn't. I can't explain it beyond that. But I never was shot at. Never got stabbed. Never got attacked on the bus. Never got molested on the bus. I'm not saying those things don't happen, but they are random. You can't predict them, and you're as likely to get killed in what you think to be safety as not.

I'm not saying ignore the reality of the world. But when your kid says "Hey, I'm going to <friend's> house", let them go on their own. Teach them how to read people. How to use the local transportation systems. They have to learn sometime, and college is a bit late to learn how the city works. Being ignorant in a strange city will get you killed far faster than the friggin' subway or a bus.

Teach them to not be stupid. If they avoid that, they'll be fine. Really.

So yeah, my mom let me do that. Worked out okay too. Thanks mom.

Technorati Tags:
Teach your kids, Free-Range Kids

Posted by John C. Welch at 22:12 | Permalink

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yes, BUT your parents were not raising a dingbat.... not that any one is, on purpose, but the longer you (let) them stay in the nest, the more mass they have to shift....wow too many metaphors, need to stop typing now... but you get the gist.

Posted by: gypsye | April 23, 2008 3:34 PM

My kids are free range and take the subway and street car with out adult supervision quite often..... i would rather they learn to recognize danger and become more independent.

Posted by: Keith robinson | April 25, 2008 11:54 AM

My mom let me do that

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