Neighborhood Kids and Growing Up: The Age of Innocence
Growing up in a neighborhood with other kids of varying ages remains one of life's best memories for me. I am well into my 60's and I can still remember all of
I had both the best and the worst of childhoods. The best is what I choose to dwell on when I let my mind wander back to those days.
I remember it as an innocent time even though there were things that happened which most assuredly contributed to the worst of those times. But the innocence was that which most children feel as they run through yards and sprinklers and streets and creeks and ride their bikes and play hopscotch and 4 square and hide and go seek.
Innocence allowed the daredevils inside us to swing on vines across the creek or fly down the hill on our bikes with feet on the handlebars or walk across the scarily tall Grandin Road Bridge or stay outside in summer well after dark playing blindman's bluff.
That innocence is the stuff all little kids are made of as they make their way through the tangled mess of growing up.
Those years and the people in them stay permanently timestamped in my memory.
For it was those days and those people who helped make the worst times bearable.
