What happened at the playground makes the Roman Colosseum look like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood in comparison

When I first read some months ago that Generation X was “the least parented generation in US history” my mind immediately went to the memories I have of being at the playground of a local public park with all the other neighborhood kids, never an adult in sight. This memory was also triggered whenever my husband and I took our son to a playground when he was little. We’d sit at a nearby bench, taking advantage of the chance to converse uninterrupted, while keeping a watchful eye on our son as he gleefully played. We noticed the playground was always surrounded by other parents, a striking contrast to our own experiences as children in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

A lot of people accuse Gen X of becoming “helicopter parents”, and there may be some truth to it. Sometimes a generation goes too far trying to right their parent’s wrongs, overcorrecting while breaking a cycle. Then there are the people who don’t even acknowledge any cycles need breaking, the ones who parent the same way they were parented, blithely repeating their parent’s mistakes. I’m a big fan of achieving a healthy middle ground, one in which cycles are broken without the pendulum swinging too far the other direction.

So my husband and I either happily played with our son at the playground or we’d hang out until he got petered out, because the last thing we wanted was for him to experience any of the traumatic things we had experienced on playgrounds, or worse.

When I was 5 years old, circa 1980, I was swinging as high as I could on the swings while most of the other kids were on the merry-go-round. I noticed they had stopped playing and were standing around one of the older neighbor boys who seemed to be telling them a story. Curious, I jumped off my swing and ran up to the group.

While listening to the boy wrapping up his story, I laughed. I hadn’t really been paying attention—I must have thought he made a joke—and the chuckle was my way of active listening. This kid, clearly not grateful for my active listening, punched me hard right in the stomach. I fell backward onto the sand with the wind knocked out of me, in total shock. Struggling to breathe and grasping my abdomen, all the kids walked away except one, a girl around my age. She stuck around to inform me that the boy had been talking about his mom having cancer.

Oops.

I’d lain there in the sand by the merry-go-round in shock, not moving a muscle, for what felt like a half hour. Not a soul helped me.

I certainly learned a hard lesson that day: don’t pretend to know what someone’s talking about if you haven’t been listening. Does that excuse the boy’s violent reaction? Absolutely not. Hopefully he eventually learned a hard lesson himself when he assaulted the next person unprovoked. It wasn’t until I became a mom that I looked back on this experience and realized how different it would’ve been if a responsible adult had been present.

The next story occurred about a year later. This one is a more difficult story to tell without getting teary-eyed, but it involves something I witnessed, not something that happened to me.

I was happily playing with my 2 friends, Faren (pronounced Fair-in) and Crystal, on the swing-set that had the 2 seats—I forget what they’re called— when we saw what looked like a few boys taunting a girl.

That’s me on the right, with Crystal (in red) and Faren (on bottom). You’d think this was photo evidence of adult supervision on at least 1 occasion but no, my older bro snapped it

We went running over to see what was going on. There were 3 boys I didn’t know around the age of 8 bullying a girl around my age (6) or younger. They circled her as she cried, taunting her with insults. Then a few of the other kids joined in, picking up tree branches and hitting the girl. I stood there in shock, not knowing what to do. My memory of Faren and Crystal gets blurry at this point—I don’t remember if they were next to me or ran home—but I do know they didn’t join the bullies.

To my horror, the main bully pushed the girl down and pulled her pants off while 2 other boys held her arms. This poor girl was sobbing, defenseless. I was terrified, but my 6-year-old brain wondered what she did to them first. Then they let her get up and as she ran to the sidewalk to get away, some of the kids spit at her as they continued lashing her with the tree branches. I could see she was bleeding from her dirt-covered wounds. She sobbed and ran home. I felt terrible for her.

Within a day or 2, the cops had knocked on our door. They’d been canvassing the neighborhood, looking for witnesses and presumably the violent offenders. I only remember my mom insisting there was no way I was involved. “My daughter is so sweet, she’s a good kid, she would never do those things.” I didn’t talk to the police myself, and felt awful about it for years. I didn’t know the kids who hurt her, so I couldn’t have provided names anyway, but I could’ve at least described them. I was too frightened, as if I was in trouble just for being there when it happened.

What happened to that girl haunts me to this day. I hope the cops discovered the bullies’ identities and the girl received justice.

Imagine if there’d been at least 1 parent there in the first place.

For Gen X Kids, There Was No Such Thing As Safe Fun

Liz LaPoint

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August 8, 2024

Gen-Xers love to joke about how little anyone seemed to care about our safety in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Memes exemplifying all the childhood dangers we survived are often tongue-in-cheek, laughing in horror at how bad, and good, we had it back then.

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