We Were Forgotten. Maybe It Helped.

From being the last kid picked up to never being late, and wondering what happened.

Comment of the week

(for the simple fact that I cannot read it without picturing my 81-year-old dad reading it and being like, WTF does any of that gobbledygook mean?)

Book Recommendation

• With opening day right around the corner, this one’s for baseball fans only. And one I’m pretty sure you haven’t heard of.

  

  

We Were Forgotten. Maybe It Helped.

Spring, 1987. Southeastern Pennsylvania. 7th grade. Baseball season.

I’m standing outside Stetson Middle School as my teammates get picked up one by one. Pretty soon, I’m the only one left. Ten minutes pass. Maybe fifteen. I start to think I should call home. I walk to the doors.

Locked.

It may seem hard to believe, but back then, when adults were done being contractually obligated to ensure your safety, they just left.

Sometimes even the country.

Don’t believe me?

I’m writing this in a public library two hours from home. I drove my daughter and her teammate across state lines (to Illinois, land of the FIB¹) for cheer practice. They’re 16. They both have cars.

We still drive them.

We carpool them down for practice 2-4 times per week. The exact number of which is decided whimsically by their cheer overlords.

I mean their coaches.

When it is my turn to drive I am happy to do so. On the way down the girls have their headphones on, so I listen to podcasts. On the way back, I get to hear the latest cheer gossip.

Win-win.

But I’m also glad to do it because I’m happy my daughter has the opportunity. She had reached an ability level at her previous gym (which, not for nothin’, was five minutes from our house) that required her to go somewhere else to continue to grow.

However, I sometimes feel something other than happiness when I think about how she’s being raised versus how I was. And maybe it hits a little harder because I’m still very much someone’s kid, too. I talk to my parents a lot. I live half a continent away, and I miss them.

Most of us are being pulled in both directions at once: trying to be present for our kids, while also showing up for the people who raised us.

It doesn’t leave much space. Not real space. The kind where you sit with something. Or someone. Mostly, it leaves you with fifteen minutes here and there.

Enough time to scroll.

📲 📳 📲 📳 📲 📳 📲 📳 📲 📳 📲 📳

Back at Stetson Middle School, I would’ve given anything for more reps. Another practice. Another game. That unfulfilled passion for sports is probably what led to my first career as a coach.

I was still pretending I had hair at this point. And yes, his untucked jersey still bothers me.

As some of you know, I host a podcast. Occasionally on the show we’ve talked about the strange place in time people of a certain age, like me, inhabit. We grew up in a world run by, and catering to, adults. We had our little corner of the world, and needed to find a way for that to make us happy.

And mostly we did.

I spent some time earlier this week researching the 1985 movie The Goonies. The kids who made up The Goonies are a great example of enjoying their little corner of the world. Their parents expected them to be home at night, but what they did on their own time was their business.

Locked in a freezer with a dead body?

…Deal with it.

Accosted by escaped felons?

…Adapt.

Locked in a basement next to a chained-up monster?

…Make friends with it.

I wanted to be a Goonie. Did you?

Fast-forward 35 years or so, and we are not the Goonies. We are the parents. But our kids aren’t Goonies, are they? Because we are trying our best to give them what we might have missed out on.

But what are they missing out on by us doing so?

☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️ ☀️ 🏴‍☠️

The sun has by now set, all those years ago, on the main entrance of Stetson Middle School. My exasperated mother arrives to pick me up. I know better than to ask what happened. Unlike my child, who will send me a series of texts if I’m so much as thirty seconds late to pick her up.

The ride home with my mom is quiet. Quiet is good. The only other option I can see in this scenario is yelling. Yelling is bad. When we arrive home I found out why. My mother’s ire is pointed squarely in the direction of my oldest sister. Apparently she had been the family representative assigned to pick me up that evening.

“No, Mom, I went to the school, and the baseball field, there was nobody there,” she replied defensively.

After an escalating back-and-forth between the two of them, we figured out the problem: My sister went to the wrong school. Whether she, in fact, didn't know where her younger brother attended school is still strangely up for debate.

So, upon going to a different middle school and not finding me (nor any other soul…which quite possibly-maybe-definitely shoulda been a red flag), she went home.

And alerted no one.

So there I sat.

🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰ 🕰️ ⏰

I grew up in a time when kids were expected to figure things out on their own, even if that meant sitting outside a locked school, wondering if anyone was coming. Now I spend hours driving my daughter across state lines so she doesn’t have to.

Somewhere along the way, we flipped from leaving things to chance…to eliminating it entirely. I’m grateful for what she has. But I do wonder what gets lost.

Independence?

Resilience?

Maybe even the ability to make friends with the monster in the basement.

And if I’m being honest, I’m not sure how much of this is about her…

…and how much is about me, not wanting her to ever stand alone outside a locked school.

Darla with some friends.

1. F’ing Illinois Bastards (don’t look at me, I didn’t make that up).