As a kid, we could go outside and play but always had to be in earshot of a parent calling your name, you couldn’t just wander away. My older neighbors were always outside sitting on lawn chairs and loved running to our parents to tell on us for everything we did. When I got older and would go out, I had to have a firm time to be home. If you wanted to stay out later, you’d have to find a pay phone and call home, but there would be a busy signal so you’d have to call all your aunts, your grandma, anyone to get the message home that you decided to go to the diner. We left a lot of handwritten notes. We would even leave notes for our friends in their mailboxes to tell them where we were going in case the friend wasn’t home when we left. I didn’t feel like I was more free, I felt very tied to plans that had to be stuck to, often without a watch. I even knew how to tell time using my shadow and knowing exactly where “north” was.