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The alleys of Mississippi Avenue

Spent time with a friend from my childhood this week. We grew up about three doors apart. We marveled at how our parents only ever kind of knew where we were and that was just fine with them and us. Because where we always were was in one of the alleys on Mississippi Avenue in Atlantic City. So if we went looking for one another, the parental unit contacted would always have one response. “She’s playing in the alley”. After that, it was up to us to find which one. And no one worried about us playing out on Mississippi Avenue even though none of us had cell phones. In fact, we would have probably gotten in trouble if we’d attempted to contact our parents every five minutes to either tell them what we were doing or ask if we could do something. We were expected to make reasonable decisions, contact them only if the blood seemed to be flowing from an artery, and stand ready to face the consequences if we made a bad decision.

Back in ancient times, that was called growing up.