How Did We Survive?

Don’t misunderstand me, if I had young kids today, I would do everything possible to protect them from all the dangers that this unpredictable world can place them in. The internet can be a very dark place. And the mean streets seem to be getting just a little meaner.

I get why parents are more protective than ever. There’s even a name for it: “helicopter parenting.” It’s a term used to describe parents who are overprotective and hover over every aspect of their children’s lives. At the other end of the spectrum, I’m of a generation whose parents would say, “Go outside and play. Come home when the streetlights go on.” How did we survive childhood? It was a different world.

Take organized sports. My mind is boggled by all the protective gear kids wear today. Young hockey players are decked out in an impregnable suit of high-tech armour beneath their outer garments.

We had almost none of that stuff. No helmets, face masks or neck guards. Few wore elbow pads and shin guards were seven or eight flimsy wooden dowels embedded in felt and leather. Goalies played bare faced with leg pads that barely came up to their knees.

On the baseball diamond, batting helmets and jaw guards were decades away. Batters’ shin pads, batting gloves and sliding mitts were unheard of.

How did we survive?

And the mystery of our survival extends also to the informal games we played in the absence of adult supervision.

Our childhood home was situated on a steep hill at an almost ninety-degree bend in the road. Whenever snow or freezing rain hit, we kids sat glued to the front window as drivers attempting to climb that hill minus winter tires slid slowly back downhill before coming to rest, doing a 180 and returning whence they came. No fun for them. A spectator sport for us. Even more entertaining were the leadfooted types coming down the hill who inevitably ending up in Mrs. Ainsworth’s front yard.

As winter morphed into summer, we hauled the old Radio Flyer wagons up to the top of the street where we’d climb aboard and let her rip. With only the skinny pull handle to steer, negotiating that infamous turn was a challenge that often ended in spectacular spills and skinned knees, but nothing serious.

A few years ago, I took a nostalgic trip back to the old neighbourhood fully expecting that the Everest of my childhood would turn out to be little more than a gentle incline. Not so. That hill was every bit as daunting as I’d remembered it.

How did we survive?

Of course, there were also the mean streets of the big city – except they just didn’t seem so mean back then.

Almost from the womb, I was besotted with baseball. The now-long-gone, Triple-A, International League Toronto Maple Leafs were my team long before the Blue Jays debuted.

I listened to all their games on the radio, but eventually tired of that and begged my parents to let me travel solo down to Maple Leaf Stadium to watch my heroes in person. That would entail a lengthy streetcar ride to reach the foot of Bathurst Street and the oddly nicknamed Fleet Street Flats.

I wasn’t optimistic, but made my case and was surprised to get the green light for an afternoon doubleheader the following Sunday. Come the big day, laden with a bag full of peanut butter sandwiches, I embarked on my great adventure. I was pretty young – maybe grade six or seven – and I went without a cellphone. But I made it home in one piece. That was just the first of many Sunday afternoon excursions to watch my baseball Leafs in the flesh.

It may be impossible to fairly compare the early 1950s with today. But I’m reminded of the words of Tommy Lasorda, the late manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. That man was no fool. Of course, he was talking about managing a baseball team, but his words apply equally to parenting and contain a little nugget of wisdom. I paraphrase: Parenting is like holding a dove in your hand. Hold it too tightly and you kill it. Too loosely and you lose it.

Though my parents never heard of Tommy Lasorda, I’m sure that’s how they instinctively approached parenting.

So, is the coat of armour that both literally and figuratively protects today’s kids in the hockey arena and the world at large the product of parental paranoia? Possibly, but today’s world truly is a minefield. Sure, helicoptering can be overdone as can the qué será, será style of parenting. Maybe Tommy Lasorda had it right. Remember that dove.

But I still wonder. How did we survive?