"When I Was Your Age..."

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
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<p>I'm with Jamimom...I was the girl that my friends' parents wished their kids would emulate. When I was a sophomore in HS, we moved to Chicago, and a high school that was at least 3 times larger than the one I'd come from. It was hard to find a niche in such a large school, so my closest friends were from my church. I got caught up in a very legalistic approach to life...if it wasn't illegal, it was probably a sin! </p>

<p>Although I have very fond memories of the good (wholesome!) times I had with my friends, I remain forever grateful to three professors at my college. I was a pre-ministerial student, and one of my religion professors, my German professor, and one of my history professors made me their "project" one semester, hoping to bust up my safe little box and prepare me for the real world where shades of grey exist. I was too naive to realize what was going on, and when they assigned me extra reading (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, etc.), I thought it was the norm. I ended up breaking down in the middle of a final, an oral examination with my German professor and couldn't continue with the assigned exam. But he spent hours with me (and called over my religion and history professor) to help me to start synthesizing all the new ideas I had been exposed to. It was truly a new beginning for me, because I was finally open to ideas and new thoughts, rather than viewing them as "the enemy." </p>

<p>So my "when I was your age" stories usually are very boring, but I'm always looking for opportunities to expose my daughter to new ways of thinking. And, I'm an unabashed cheerleader for LACs because of the care, concern, and education I received from my professors, in and out of the classroom.</p>

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<p>When I was your age... any kid savvy enough to cross the street was allowed to go out "trick or treating" without partental supervision or armed guard. We favored the candy we received but also carried home a large number of apples---which our parents did not feel obligated to x-ray for foreign objects. More costumes were made from things found in closets than things found in stores.</p>

<hr>

<p>No, it wasn't all roses and Norman Rockwell. We had a dreadful fear of polio which was making the annual rounds, but I think that would have been preferred to todays fear of strangers who prey on young children and put nasty things in their apples.</p>

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<p>I started at Michigan in 1965 when I was 17. The first two years we drank non-stop, partied at fraternities, cheered football games, wore circle pins and danced to Gloria. Then came the Summer of Love and we all switched to grass and hallucinogens, wore Day-Glo mini skirts, grooved to Country Joe, and organized anti-war demos. During the "transitional period" the Doors performed on campus. Jim Morrison was pychedelicized beyond the fringe. The frat crowd booed them off the stage and the hippies were too spaced out to protest. Studying as I recall was peripheral. I loved Art History because as soon as the lights went out and the slides came on I'd be asleep. I'd never been out of the country and didn't have a clue whither I wentist. 30 years later, I'm a clean-living feminist conservative who runs an international business in Indonesia. What a long strange trip it's been!</p>

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<p>Jamimom, Don't feel that I have been blindsided, but never say never. Life can twist around and bite you at any point.</p>

<p>Mine was the third generation to go to college, my S's are the fourth generation. There are pitfalls to affluence and my family was affected by a certain diffidence. For whatever reason, I attached myself to art and architecture and sailed beyond the diffidence. My mother first put me in an art sutdio when I was 12 and she did it because the teachers and neighbors warned her about my troublemaking. </p>

<p>Attachment is the key, perhaps, finding something with the potential for higher meaning. Like your children finding medicine. That's my focus with my Ss.</p>

<p>I look back at the crazibusiness all the time, devising radical revisions to my parent's methods--ie banning part-time/afterschool work; a throw-back to my grandparent's generation. But my parents did the best the could, blindsided or not. They still have lots of worries!</p>

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<p>cheers--hate to sidetrack you, but we are far from affluent and we've always forbidden our son from working because school is his full-time job. I've always felt a bit odd for doing it, as almost all his friends make money. He is allowed to tutor the elderly on the use of their computers and repair them in the people's homes, but that's it. He's been very tolerant about how little cash this policy has left him with, I must say! We give him what we can. It's nice to know we're not the only ones.</p>

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<p>I too, was one of the more "straight-laced" HS and college kids who tended to a be a bit risk-avoidant. About the biggest risk I took in HS was to stand on street corners handing out fliers for the moratorium against the war. As others have indicated, the drinking age was 18 back then, and going to college in the 70's was definitely an experience. It was pretty hard not to do a few stupid things. But maybe jumping at some of life's adventures isn't such a bad thing. Looking back, there are things I would have done differently, if I had been more of a risk taker. I wish...
1) I had gone to my HS prom at Dangerfields (it was seriously uncool to go to the prom back then)
2) I hadn't supported my HS classes decision to drop the school's membership chapter of the National Honor Society in protest of something I now can't recall (which the next class promptly reinstated)
3) I had accepted the invitation to hear Janis Joplin in NYC
4) and ditto for Jimi Hendrix (yes-- I turned down BOTH invitations!!)
5) and (gee no surprise here) wish that I hadn't turned down the opportunity to go to Woodstock
Grad school was more of a social awakening for me. Better late than never I suppose.. But while I can't really imagine jumping off bridges, I see that all you lived to tell about it. I don't want my s. to do anything too dangerous, but I want him to enjoy opportunities to explore life. My older s. (the college frosh) seems to have a good head on his shoulders. If he does something too risky, I probably won't hear about it. My younger s., still in HS, seems to be one I might like to keep a tighter reign on...if I only could...</p>

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<p>This is a great post....let's refreshen...!! I was away when this "When I was you age.." was being explored!</p>

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<p>And now we wonder why we are soooo involved with our kids?????</p>

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<p>WTF!! my essay is based on this topic!! ahh gotta change it deadline in 12 hrs!!!!!</p>

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<p>a friend and I were just talking about this.
Saturday, I dropped off my 14 yr old D and her 15 yr old best friend at a Halloween party of a friend from last year. I was told by the mom that the party was over at 12:30, I said thats too late for me I will be there at 11.
Anyway, when I pulled up at 11 I had to park several blocks away from the culdesac, as there were too many cars. While I was sitting in the car, wondering what my approach would be, more cars pulled up with teens in costume disembarking.
Some looked like they were drinking ( but to give them credit, it could have been bottled water). It reminded me of parties when my father had to come to the house to drag me out, but the other "guests" told him I wasn't there.
I dreaded having to "find" her in the crowd that must have been there,so I called on the phone and asked the mom to be sure she was ready. By the time I made my way to the house however, she was already outside and ready to go!
The kids I had seen driving up were actually at a party across the culdesac, and she was tired /bored and ready to go to bed!
( so I was lucky that time- but eventually I expect karmic retribution)
My friend is way more paranoid than I am however, when her 13 yr old daughter came home from a day of trick or treating and partying and went promptly to bed, she worried that/ that was a sign of drug use! @@</p>

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<p>I am bumping up this very old thread because I have been looking for it for eons and just ran across it. So what did YOU do when you were their age???</p>

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<p>I worked from the time that I was 14, detassling corn, walking beans and then retail jobs. I was a cheerleader, dance captain, drama queen, and manager of the girls’ basketball team, so high school was my life. OTOH, I partied so much more than my DS and his friends. My friends and I would go to 4-keg parties just about every weekend, and remember getting alcohol poisoning at least twice. I always thought my grades were comparable to DS, but when I ordered a transcript for myself I forgot about my senioritis (including a D in French 4). </p>

<p>DH was a typical Berkeley stoner, getting high in the park at lunch and racing motorcycles every weekend… We always wonder how two party people could have such a straight kid.</p>

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<p>Graduated high school, barely learned a thing, applied to two colleges and got into both, on move-in day parents dropped me off at campus with my two green trash bags of clothes and left me. Had the best experience ever, made great friends, experimented with drugs and booze, learned alot about independence, met my future wife, got married and had children, started a couple companies, made alot of money, sold one company, spent time with my kids and wife, volunteered to help young entrepeneurs, everyone is happy, healthy, and productive. Only in America, what a wonderful country we live in !!</p>

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<p>Got a copy of “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask” as a going-away-to-college present from my best friend, who had already been at college for a year. Figured I wouldn’t need the information for a long time. Needed it within three months.</p>

<p>Had too much to drink once. Once was enough.</p>

<p>Never tried marijuana. I couldn’t face the idea of smoking anything.</p>

<p>Came home from college one weekend to visit my boyfriend at his parents’ home while his parents were out of town. Never told my parents.</p>

<p>Had a car at school one semester, when my family didn’t need it. Offered a ride home to a girl from my dorm who lived along the route. Didn’t realize she was bringing home her pet chicken.</p>

<p>Got married at 21 – what was I thinking?</p>

<p>A week before I got married, while my soon-to-be-husband was sick with German measles, went out dancing with two guys and another girl (and didn’t tell my fiance). These other people invited me because they knew that I like to dance and that I was about to marry a guy who refused to dance under any circumstances. They figured it was the last time I would ever get to dance. They were right (so far – it’s only been 35 years).</p>

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<p>Well at my first college overnight (I was 16 at the time and had traveled their on my own from DC as my parents were in Africa) at Harvard all I remember was drinking daiquiris and setting hairspray cans on fire. I must have visited a class or done something more productive, but I don’t remember it!</p>

<p>In college itself, drank a lot, smoked some pot (only bought it once), played a lot of bridge, my boyfriend moved into my room, graduated with honors. Spent two summers in Europe, one of them paid by a grant from college to do research for my senior thesis.</p>

<p>The year after college I lived in a camping van and traveled around the country photographing fire stations.</p>

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<p>I skipped class, read books in the hallway, hid under my hats, sat in cafes with my friends while they smoked and drank coffee and talked about the parties they’d gone to while I had Diet Coke and listened…it wasn’t much of a high school life.</p>

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<p>wow this thread is really old. I don’t even * remember* the Halloween party I mentioned above!</p>

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<p>When I was your age…</p>

<p>The legal drinking age (everything) was 18, so half of my class was legal midway through Senior year of high school, and everyone was legal within a month of starting college. Our college had a bar in the lower level of the student union. It opened at noon (I think… maybe this is wishful remembering), and a LOT of people spent their lunch hours there watching soaps and drinking beer. Dollar pitchers.</p>

<p>Growing up, there was no school bus service within the town limits, so everyone who didn’t live in the country walked to school. Parents only drove you if it was pouring rain or bitterly cold. </p>

<p>There was still a dress code (public schools) requiring girls to wear skirts or dresses until I was in seventh grade, when girls were allowed to wear “pants suits”. By the time I was in high school, the dress code had been dropped completely. My sister, a few years older than me, was sent home routinely one year for wearing her skirts too short. They were supposed to touch the ground when you kneeled… this was at the beginning of the era of the miniskirt. The administration gave up on that, and switched to requiring skirts to be no shorter than your finger tips. She continued to be sent home to change.</p>

<p>During my elementary years only the bus kids were allowed to stay at school for lunch. The rest of us walked home for lunch. </p>

<p>Everyone spent every waking hour possible outside, unsupervised. You went home when the streetlights came on. Our parents had no idea where we were most of the time, and no way of getting ahold of us other than to drive around town or call around to other parents. We rode bikes everywhere unless the streets were too snowy or icy in the winter. We went ice skating every evening, all winter, if it wasn’t too cold. My parents’ definition of “too cold” was less than 10 degrees. The ice rink was the flooded baseball field at one of the town parks. They played the same 8 songs all winter, over and over. Even now, whenever I hear anything by The Partridge Family my fingers and toes get cold. :)</p>

<p>I took swimming lessons at a local beach, in Lake Michigan every summer. Sometimes there were white caps running through the lesson. There was no town owned pool until I was in high school. </p>

<p>No wonder there was less obesity then! We all put on a lot of miles every day.</p>

<p>Funny thing, my actual schooling (what I learned, what classes I took) through high school is such a small part of my memories.</p>

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<p>Everyday I thank God that my kids are not doing what I was doing at their ages. I look back and realize it’s a miracle I survived. </p>

<p>I’ll never forget that one drunken night on the railroad tracks…</p>

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<p>Such a fun thread. I loved riding around in the back of pick-up trucks. Loved learning to drive a stick-shift car on Iowa back roads; the car was my boyfriend’s parents Datsun and they would have died had they known. it still makes me laugh. Loved riding the bus to away football and basketball games and one time mooned somebody out the back… Those skirts were short.</p>