Growing up Denatured (Or, there she goes again)

Just recalled the advice I always got from my father (prolly passed down from my grandfather, like most of the aphorisms I received): "Be good. If you can't be good, be safe. If you can't be safe, be careful."

And that was about it. As I got older, implicit in this was, "Don't get arrested."

It's funny back home things have changed a lot - i mean i live in the suburbs, practically the country but things have changed

My grandparents on the other hand live in a 28 house village called Lendalfoot in the middle of nowhere in Scotland - literally half a mile perpendicular to the beach. Every summer all the kids who spent their summers there (my mum, Ailsa, Patrick, Mark, Jeremy, Judy) bring their own kids up. There's nothing to do except play cricket, swim, have bonfires on the beach and climb Lendal (the massive fell) for 2 weeks... so we do

It's funny, I've been pining to live in a place where my kids could roam outdoors more freely. We're fair weather outdoorspeople too, but we don't get as much fair weather here as foul. I wasn't allowed to completely roam free, but I was often unsupervised. I think that is important to a child's development. Unfortunately, I think many mothers, certainly myself included, fear judgment from others if we should let our kids get too far away from us.

Luckily, my neighborhood is great, and there are lots of roaming children riding bikes and skateboards and just playing around during our 1 and a half months of summer.

Er... where is Toilettown?

We used to live in Lub-yuck Texas.

Toilettown is in PA a bit east of Pittsburgh. The name I've given it is utterly appropriate.