Yup - that's me - born before 1986 I tell my kids some of these things. The one about going out in the morning and not showing back up until dark, especially if it was summertime, really hit home. No one minded or cared. I used to play a lot of baseball, hours and hours of it in the summer. Girls and boys played baseball together - girls were not yet sidelined into softball. There were no parents to get into fights with the coach - there was no coach. We settled our differences ourselves - sometimes by kicking the sh!t out of each other but it got settled. We agreed on our own rules and we played by them. My kids played baseball growing up and it was very alien to me, it was so regimented. I miss the freedom that kids used to have - everything is so damn organized and scheduled now. And I can still outpitch my kids - they never played long enough to get good - they hated the regimentation too

Kathleen