‘Things kids with helicopter parents miss out on,’for a thousand, Alex.

OK, first and foremost, let’s get the gross fan girl thing out of the way, and suffice it to say that Corrigan is a true fine writer, and more importantly, she records a slice of American history that may not be recorded without her voice.

Her personal experience is fairly vast, being a Navy veteran and a mom of four kids, with a multi-generational home life that she shares to help others have it just a little bit easier.

I admire her. This piece was inspired by one of her recent notes regarding helicopter parenting and being at the library with her 7 year-old.

“I’m at the library with her. As per usual, I go to the children’s section with her, I bring a book, and I park in a chair in the corner.”

First memory that snaps into my mind like I was back there again: my mom and I at the downtown public library in Atlanta, where she did the exact same thing and it was one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me. I still visit the library and use it liberally. Libraries are tits. Reading is a divine pleasure and libraries make it available to everyone. There’s nothing cooler than that.

That’s where the similarities in her experience and my memories end, as she goes on to say,

“Now, these younger parents are never further than 2 feet from their kids. They follow them around as they play, look at books, and interact with other kids. The parents interrupt and interject, coaching and guiding their kid’s interactions with other kids.”

Let me promise you that my mom was there with me but she was reading a book, and I probably could have caught on fire before she noticed. Let me also stress forcefully that this was in no way neglectful.

I’m a Gen-Xer, one of the last generations to be given almost full and complete autonomy over our play time. The rules were, “Watch out for your brother and don’t go in the road. Be home when the streetlights come on.”

Honestly, we were as close to feral as humanly possible. The vast amount of street smarts I gathered while we ‘stayed out of the road,’ have been beneficial in my adult life a lot more often than knowing how to find the circumference of circle.

It’s fair to say I wasn’t super-attentive when my children were young. I let them play unattended - not because I knew it would be good for them, but because I didn’t know what the hell else to do with them besides take them to the library and make sure they knew how to read.

I was also selfish with my time and hadn’t learned to share it with them much beyond the necessary stuff. Parenting is learning and the shitty part is, you don’t finish learning how to do it before they finish needing you. At least I didn’t.

I remarked to Melissa that I feel like I would be arrested for my parenting standards when I was a young mom. Today’s helicopter parents would have me drawn and quartered if they knew I let my 8 year-old kid run wild enough in East Dayton to bring home a pigeon she caught in a cage that she found in a dumpster.

(Vaccinations work. Have your children vaccinated just in case they escape and crawl into an East Dayton garbage dumpster on a hot day.)

Let me tell you, that kid was so proud of herself it would have been worth a respiratory infection.

She was over the moon about her new pet ‘piget’, which appeared to be very unwell and just as surprised as I was when I opened the back door for my little munchkin to trudge into the house with a diseased East Dayton pigeon, crammed into a busted-up, discarded canary cage.

I don’t know if the pigeon was unwell from the process of capture, which I never really ascertained beyond, “I catched him,” or it was unwell to begin with and that’s why an eight year-old kid could go through the entire process of finding a cage and capturing a wild animal before it got away from her.

Was it my most sterling parenting moment?

Nah.

However, she can catch a bird if she needs to, so there’s that. Also, she didn’t get a respiratory infection, or even tetanus from the rusty cage. Talking her into letting it ‘go live in the tree behind our house,’ was more difficult than it should have been, but she learned valuable bargaining skills. All in all, not a terrible parenting moment by my standards.

The world is different now and I would probably lose my mind if I had little ones to watch after. I worry enough for my grown daughter and nieces and nephews (all over the age of 10) making it through this snake farm of a society we’ve left to them.

I will give a little grace to the helicopter-ers because of that. I said a LITTLE. Let them kids pick out their own books, for heaven’s sake. How is anyone gonna learn to do anything if you do it for them? That’s not help, that’s control.

It’s a fine line. I’m super-happy I don’t have to walk it anymore. Kudos to the moms and dads out there doing a good job. And thanks, Melissa, for always making my brain work when I read you.

Until next time, be safe out there. Don’t forget to touch grass and read a book. And turn it up when you Rock the Casba.