Its Fine.

When my brother and I were younger, we'd come home from school and make a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. Then we'd eat half the dough...raw. Then we might cook the remainder for our parents. We LOVED this.

I also remember distinctly riding in the back of the pick up truck numerous times. We used to car pool to school on days we had choir or band or whatever and sometimes when it was my mom's turn to drive we would have to take the truck and pile in the back...there was a topper, but it was just wide open back there. We were always told to sit close to the front or on the sides though. I also very vividly remember getting sick one morning after going out to brunch and on the way home from Omaha I had to ride laying down in the back of the truck because I'd throw up if I was sitting up.

In the good old days, my friend Ali and I would get on our matching bikes and ride around the neighborhood for hours. If it was a hot summer day, we'd wiggle in our swim suits and stop at all the houses watering their lawn and run thru the sprinklers. It was the best. We also would stop at the ditch and swing into it on the branches of the willow tree that hung over it. (That is until someone new moved in and yelled at us!)

The point is, I did all this and more and am still alive to tell about it.

Parents today don't let their kids do that. They don't get to go out and just play. Everything is scheduled. Parents are too worried about their kids getting sick, or fat, or abducted to really let them do anything fun or spontaneous. It makes me wonder what this generation will grow up to be like... I hope I won't be like that as a parent. I hope I remember what its like to play in the backyard until it got dark, to ride bikes all afternoon and to just have time to be a kid.