Those good old days..
Saturday, July 29, 2006 at 11:24PM The last two weeks have been extremely hot in California. I have not experienced a summer like this in the last 9 years !! Jr. wanted to cool off and we took her to the Cupertino City Center. There is a beautiful water fountain outside the City library where kids are allowed to play. The entire place has a festive atmosphere with parents sitting around the fountain and kids playing in the water..We went pretty late this time (so not many kids!).
This reminded me of the good old days when I was a kid. Grandpa used to walk us (me and my brother) to Nageshwara Rao Park (in Madras) and we used to play in the swing and slide and hang on the bars like monkeys in the belief that it would make us taller !!
Grandpa would buy us roasted nuts (by default my brother would go for peanuts and I would always go for roasted peas..years later I found out that I am allergic to peanuts..somehow, I had avoided peanuts whenever my subconscious felt it was a bad idea)..On our way back, we used to stop by the Ambika Appalm Depot and get snacks to eat the rest of the way. We used to bug him so much to buy us the latest issues of Marvel comics or Champak magazines. We used to go by ourselves or with our street friends or school friends when we were older.
When I watch Jr. play in the water, I just realize that we had as much fun as Jr. if not more, when we were little, because we always had friends and we could go out with our friends and come back home and it was safe..In todays world though, we have to chaperone the kids. I sincerely hope the world becomes a safer place when my kids grow up and I can relax and send them to the park with their friends!!!
Reader Comments (2)
This is a really sad reality - i grew up running around the whole town - ive even been mugged by a thief - but i still was allowed to run around - so im not sure if were over protecting kids - or is it really that bad outside there
visithra, that is a very good question.. sangeetha and me are discussing this more often now than ever.. maybe india in the seventies wasnt any safer and the % child abductors/ molesters in the population wasnt any different... and maybe our parents just didnt know ? or maybe the world is a worse place now !!