|
I grew up in Bulgaria, but my experience as a kid (80s-90s) seems like similar to what my (future) boss (in Los Angeles) when he was growing up in SF Valley (60s-70s) - get on the bike, go places, school, etc. We had much smaller amount of cars. For one we had these self-made wood carts with ball-bearings as "tires", and we would slide with them on the streets while other cars were driving. Ok, not on the main street, but somewhere on a hill. If I get bloodied, my gramma would be - yaaah it's fine. Go to the doctor (by myself, 2nd grade) and get tetanous shot (I vividly remember this when I stepped on a rusty nail). They were still worried, but I guess due to lack of phones (even land line wasn't covered well), that's the best they can do. One day, I was 4, maybe 5, me and my cousin (year older) decided (well it was my decision apparently, lol) that we need our plastic toy truck from my grandparents, and decided to take it. So we took off from a small city (Tzhernomortez) nearby my home city (Burgas) - and decide to walk it - I haven't checked - but the distance is 20-30km. So we walk, put some signs down, ate some really bad grassy looking thing, a bus of janitors/workers picked us up and left us somewhere, so probably from 9:00AM somewhere to 2, 3pm was our "trip". And we end up knocking on my grandparents door - we need our truck! :) - Well, yes everyone was spooked (normal), but that was it. It was later just told as funny story. Now many years later, in US, with my son (~15 soon) I'm still spooked where he goes, we have the tracker (he's okay with it) and track each other in case something happens. I wish I had less available information... But also the streets in the US, even in neighbourhoods where people live, not work are just too damn wide :) - and cars, while observing most of the time the speed limits, when comes traffic time and they look for shortcuts, some of them go way too fast (and yes, I probably did the same in other places, when in a hurry). We had our neighbour's two dogs killed, because someone was swerving too fast, where you should slow down to a crawl really. But it is, what it is. |
HA, I thought that was only in my country we had those :D. In Brazil it's called "carrinho de rolemã"!