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

We drank from the garden hose. Not filtered water. Not bottled water. Hose water — warm from sitting in the sun, tasting faintly of rubber and freedom. We kinked the hose to build pressure and unleashed it like firefighters, soaking each other while nobody cared. Hydration was wherever you found it, and you found it sticking out of the side of somebody's house.

Our parents' entire parenting 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. Streetlights on, you hauled yourself home.

Between morning and streetlights, we were ungoverned. We built ramps. We explored construction sites. We ate things we found.

Were the 80s safe? Absolutely not. Glorious? Completely. Pour one out for the hose water — it built character, or at least immunity.