The ‘70s were the best decade ever, to grow up in.

I was born in 1964, and by the time the ‘70s rolled around I was pretty much on my own to raise myself.  Growing up, I don’t remember a time when I was not able to do whatever I wanted; like most parents of that time, my mom and dad were the partying types with groups of friends over every Friday and Saturday nights with lots of drinking, loud music, and cigarette smoke so thick in the air that in the morning when I woke up I used it as my personal Etch-a-Sketch, drawing my name in the thick plumes of leftover smoke from the night before.  Passing by all the leftover Schlitz cans on the kitchen table, while everyone was still sleeping I would eat endless bowls of Fruit Loops in front of Saturday morning cartoons and without anyone knowing it I would slip out the back door on my banana-seat bike with my matted-up, unbrushed hair, Converse sneakers and with a pair of steel-wheeled roller skates draped over my shoulder and no one would see or hear from me for the rest of the day.  The entire world was my playground, we never knew where we would end up or whose house we planned to invade until we got there – playing hours of kickball, frisbee, ping pong, jump rope, hopscotch, and going from one friend’s backyard pool to another before realizing I was hungry, heading home for my lunch of bologna and potato chip sandwiches with mayo on white bread and a can of Coke.  It was the time that dreams were made of.

Most kids, like me, raised themselves usually by making mistakes.  We learned on our own that if we tried to steal the new Archie comic edition from the drugstore we would probably get caught – the embarrassment alone of being caught almost killed us, if the prospect of our parents finding out didn’t kill us first.  Boys went from being the ultimate baseball competitors and having the best toys to being someone to write love notes to during class movies.  No one cared, or warned us about boys that moved too fast.

It was a time when children had a sense of true freedom.  Feeling freedom wasn’t anything we ever thought about, it was just who we were as a generation and as kids of that era in time.  Fear about child predators, drug dealers on street corners, and other worries of today were a million miles from then and through our sense of independence we learned self-reliance, how to throw a punch, confidence, and self-sufficiency, not to mention how to stitch up a cut on our own by sneaking thread and needle from our moms’ sewing kit.  It was just … what kids did.

The ‘70s undeniably had the best music, and if you ever wanted to hear your favorite song you’d better settle in and be prepared to wait all day until you heard it on the radio.  When it finally came on we would stop everything we were doing just to listen.  It was the best two minutes of our day.  I own the fact that I could enthusiastically perform every choreographed Motown background singer dance –  older teenage American Bandstand dancers had nothing on me and the moves I had dancing for hours in my living room, wishing I was even half as cool and stylish as the girls on the show who just looked bored and like all they wanted was a cigarette break.

Someone on a recent podcast made a sarcastic joke that kids in her neighborhood go outside so infrequently that when she sees them outside she wonders if they are OK and if she needs to call the cops.  This made me incredibly sad.  I wondered how the kids of today are ever going to learn how to bait a hook from the inside of their houses, or wonder if they have ever experienced the excitement of seeing a bird nest filled with eggs.  I wondered if they have ever experienced jumping off a rock wall into a pond of freezing cold water, ridden a waterfall into a flowing stream on an inner tube drifting like a leaf floating on the river, or if they will ever know the exhausting work of siphoning water out of a playground sprinkler system to avoid going all the way home just for a glass of water.

I look back on my childhood and think, damn what a great childhood I had.  It was the best of times.  I raised myself to be a good-hearted, emotionally intelligent, resilient, and totally independent woman with amazing field first-aid skills.  I still have impressive Motown dance moves and enjoy a good Push Pop from the ice cream truck from time to time … when they come around.  Some things never change.  However, while it’s fun to occasionally revisit the memories of that era, I don’t live there.  Even though I’ve gotten older and my interests have changed, I’ve moved on to the world of Legend of Zelda now.  Move over, Gen Zs.  Let us ‘70s kids show you how it’s done.