Our Parents' Parenting Style Was 'Good Luck Out There'

We drank from the garden hose. Not filtered, not bottled — hose water, warm from the sun and tasting faintly of rubber and freedom. We kinked it for pressure and blasted each other like firefighters. Hydration was wherever you found it, and you found it sticking out of the side of somebody's house.

Our parents' entire philosophy was "good luck out there," and they meant it with their whole chests. No helmets. Brakes that worked on a philosophical level. One safety briefing, delivered in 1983: "don't get hit by a car." Curfew wasn't a time — it was a lighting condition.

Were the 80s safe? Absolutely not. Glorious? Completely.