Oh To Be Young Again.... Not

I don't know when it came to pass that kids' lives started being micro-managed. When I was growing up, it seems to me, we were largely left on our own to figure out what to do with our free time Saturdays, Sundays, and the hours between the end of school and dinner. Free time. The concept didn't even exist for us. Time just was free, it didn't need a specific appellation to distinguish it from the rest of the day. When did free time get replaced by structured time? Lucky little buggers. I can barely imagine how thrilling it must be to have real referees in striped shirts and black knee socks adjudicating one's playtime, the unbridled joy of having mom regularly on call to get you from a tutoring session to band practice to counseling, and not having to make up your own rules for hastily cobbled-together games that involved rocks. We didn't have an outfield fence to swing for when I was eleven. Instead, we got a home run by hitting two sewers on a fly, and God forbid a car should turn the corner at the wrong moment. When I was in my early teens I went to art school in New York two afternoons a week. My mom had to pick me up early from school and get me to the train that took me from our suburb into the city. That was the extent of my coddling. Twenty minutes twice a week. I had a deprived childhood.