See The Sun

Back in the days

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 | Personal

When I went to school we all went by ourselves, it was not necessary for the parents to bring us. Well, there wasn’t any big road to cross in my case but I know some of my friends had to. And even I was allowed to run some errands for my mom to shops that were a bit further away and required me to cross main roads when I was only 4 years old. Until I got into a car of strangers that is. Of course I was instructed n e v e r to do that, but little me thought it was okay in that specific case - and luckily it was.

Times have changed. My little brother and every other kid from our block is being brought to school by their parents. It is a long way to school from where we live now - there are 2 main roads to cross and it takes around 25 minutes to walk. At least for the time being my parents decided to go along and do as the other parents. There’s been a kidnapping a few weeks ago and also in general I suppose it’s more dangerous. Of course it is difficult to find a balance between reasonable caution and excessive fear - and I do think kids need to learn responsible behaviour when they’re on their own.

Although being brought to school by car certainly seems like a luxury I don’t envy my brother. We are kind of a close-knit family and certainly the first 3 of us children grew up quite protected (my brother too, but the circumstances have changed and I feel in his case it is a completely different kind of protected) so although I never felt ‘entrapped’ I enjoyed the ‘freedom’ the way to school brought. I could walk however fast I wanted, stop to look at what I wanted, talk to who I wanted… Oh, what carefree and unspoiled times these early years of kindergarten and school were!

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