You Can't Go Outside But...

Yesterday I wrote about not being able to go outside as a kid. I started thinking about the weird contradictions to the rules that I never noticed. I couldn't go outside the yard to play mostly because my grandparents didn't trust the kids in the neighborhood. They were right for the most part as a lot of them either ended up in jail, pregnant, or just didn't turn out too well. All other reasons seemed to be okay.

First, I started walking to school by myself in the first grade. Now granted, the school was at the corner, still it was light years away from the tree that was my iron curtain. Second, the liquor store was the yellow brick road. When I turned about six, my grandmother realized that my little legs could run errands for her. It was nothing for me to run around the corner to the store and pick up a soda, some candy, ice cream or something else for her. By seven the Asian lady running the place had already established that it was okay for me to come pick up a "package" for my grandmother as long as I had a note. I now know exactly what I was picking up, but at six I really did think that the postman left a glass bottle of fancy water (Seagram's if memory serves me correctly) for her at the store by mistake and I needed to go pick it up for her along with a pack of Parliament cigarettes and two books of matches.  The lady at the counter would always say, "Go straight home, walk slow and don't open this bag for any reason. You're such a good young man to pick this up for your grandmother."

Also interesting is the freedom to go to the movies that came at age ten. No one ever believes this, but when I was ten years old they dropped me off at Union Station to go see the movie Dave. A week or two later I went to see Stargate. By the time Mario Bros and Jurassic Park came out, I was going to the movies all the time by myself. Strange enough, I was never carded for anything. I had a full mustache by the time I was in the fifth grade anyway, so I guess I looked old enough for a PG-13 movie.

We wont even go into when I started catching public transportation. I caught my first bus alone at age five. Always the schemer, I used to keep the money by pretending to be with another adult getting on the bus. I'd then use my money to buy candy at the store on one of my trips to pick up a package of water for my grandmother. lol

Good times indeed.