The Last Paperboy

My wife and I, when we have a few moments of uninterrupted conversation, often attempt to predict the future of our children. Of course, this is a fruitless endeavor: we cannot draw upon our own formative experiences to foresee our children's future. The world has changed and, more precisely, parenting has changed to such a dgree that our children will spend their formative years in a social and economic environment radically divergent from our own. So much of our lives as children passed in absence of the constant attendance of adults. Like the characters of a Charlie Brown holiday special, we enjoyed near total autonomy with the occational appearance of an incomprehensible adult.

But all that has changed. Today's children must be constantly and rigorously invigilated lest some harm or malfeasance happen upon them in the blink of eye. From our current perspective, perverts, pedophiles, and predators abound lurking in all quarters. Drug dealers and drunk drivers prowl the streets awaiting the opportune moment to slaughter adolescent innocence. Did these dangers not exist when we were children? Has the world changed or is it just our awareness? Are these the dangers to be feared by parents or is it our own stifling of childhood independence that presents the real threat?

A friend recounted to me the other day a story of Utah woman who recently received a child endangerment misdemeanor for allowing her seven-year-old to ride to school alone on her bike. Heck, the moment I learned to ride a bike I was off. By the time I was seven the majority of my friends and I rode well over a mile to school and back each day. These days, however, we would all be stopped by the police and our parents arrested for doing such!

My wife and I lament these changes and wonder with nostalgia, "where have all the paperboys gone?" We have come to the conclusion that we are the last generation of paperboys. Partially from economic necessity and partially due to the new parental control of youth, the adolescent paperboy has become extinct. At the age of nine, I experienced for the first time true economic independence when I collected the first ten dollars from one of my customers. With my brother I then promptly rode to a mall across many busy intersections to enjoy the fruits of my labor at the Galactican Arcade. I doubt my children will ever experience such independence before they become a legal adult.