Mine are not so bad after all

Just read a blog on confessions of a psychotherapist about things one can do now which one wasn't allowed to do as a child which got me thinking about some of the stuff I did as a small child about the same age as my oldest child is now.

Firstly, I used to walk to and from school mostly by myself in those carefree days. I don't think my parents ever thought I was in any danger, or maybe they were just hopeful that some day I really would be taken. Anyway, it meant freedom of expression for me for 10 mins in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon (I ran in the morning to avoid being late).

One afternoon, on the way home I stopped at the shop and bought a drink, some crisps and some sweets. As I walked I stuffed my face with the solids and then as a car approached in the oncomming direction, I took a quick swig of drink and, as the car drew level, I pretended to be sick in the gutter. I had sufficient "spice" (yorkshire term) to do this to most of the cars all the way home - remember this was 35 years ago and there were few cars around. Great fun and a valuable practice for later in life as a pizza fueled drunk.

On another occasion, I walked all the way home with one eye shut. This was as an experiment to see (no pun intended) what it would be like to only have one eye. A new kid in school had just arrived and he had glasses AND an eye patch over one eye. I assumed he only had one eye and wondered at the waste of glass in his spectacles. I now kniow, he did infact have two eyes and one was patched to correct a "lazy" eye.

Anyway it was fun walking home with one eye shut and getting lots of sympathetic looks from passers by. The interesting thing about it was that if you only have one eye, people think that you can't see at all and that you are also deaf. As in blatent staring and comments which I could hear like "Oooh look at that poor little boy with only one eye".

So now as a dad myself I can see that my two are just fine really, so it's upto me to work harder at messing them up.