Helicopter Parents Can’t Fly In A Hurricane

Back in the late eighties in Florida, we had a hurricane that knocked out the power for several days. During the day, it was fine, as I was a kid and lived when I was gone all day and would come home when the streetlights turned on. So, way after the sun went down, my friends and I were still playing in the woods behind the neighborhood, looking over, waiting for the lights to end our fun.

Sometime after that, we started hearing our names as the parents started to worry about us. We all went home and all got in trouble for not using common sense that the lights were not going to turn on in a power outage.

I had forgotten all of the above because nothing interesting had happened. What I learned over family dinner last night was that one of those commercials came on the radio, “It’s 11 O’clock, do you know where your children are?” and my mom realized that they did not, in fact, know where we were, so she started shouting for me, which alerted the houses nearby, and they noticed that their kids were not home either.

The eighties were a unique time to grow up, that’s for sure.