36/365 - Now tell me, how good were you?
I sometimes worry I am not fun enough for my kids….
By the time I was 8 years, same age as Ian, I had already climbed every single tree and had stolen flowers from every garden on a 3km radius from the flat I lived in. I would sell some of the flowers I stole, to buy chewing gum with cool stickers.
I burned my eyebrows smoking cigarette butts with my friends and I chased, hugged and was bitten multiple times by street dogs. I had a new bruise or a cut every day, but I never slowed down.
I first went clubbing, outside my hometown, when I was 7 with a neighbour that was twice my age. It wasn’t planned, I just got dragged along, but danced from all my hinges rest assured!
I confess! I climbed out the window from my auntie’s countryside home to go with my friend. She was taking her cow to graze to a far away, dangerous hill. I just had to go! Returned late in the evening, banging the iron gate and acting all normal.
I taught myself to ride a bike when I was 7.
I used to spend hours behind the ten storey building playing with a stick tied with a piece of cassette tape, thinking I am doing rhythmic gymnastics.
I lived on the 9th floor in a flat facing the main boulevard. The amount of times I have thrown rotten eggs, onions, potatoes and plastic bags filled with water on the people passing by on the street underneath my balcony, would scare the heck out of a modern parent.
Also, I want to apologise to all the people, dead or alive, who’s bell I would ring and run away, pretty much every day.
Those are just things that I remember from the top of my head.
When I hear the outrage in some parents voices, for crazy small things I wonder if they were Church doors as children (a Romanian old saying that means, sarcastically - the purest of people).
The best filter I can use when I tell off my kids is to remember the stuff I used to do when I was their age.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I would teach my kids to do what I did, but… the expectations today from kids are just silly!
You got this!
