Is It Worth It to Get Burned?

When I was about five, I got a working miniature iron for Christmas. I was thrilled. It was painted turquoise on top, had a shiny silver plate on the bottom, and its plastic handle was just the right size for my tiny palm. When plugged in, my dainty-looking electric iron heated up enough that it would have given me a third-degree burn if I'd been careless. As it was, I singed my little fingers every time I used it, but I loved it nonetheless, and I learned to be cautious when it was time to use the real thing.

Of course, what made that toy so exciting was that it was an actual working model of a grown-up's object, not some namby-pamby knock-off without enough power to do anything but look cute. It was lightweight and adorable, which made it cute and seemingly child-friendly in a time when kids were expected to get injured occasionally, and burns, broken bones and various childhood diseases (German measles, chicken pox) were par for the course.

Around that time, a popular gift for young girls was Hasbro's Easy-Bake Oven. Oh, how I wanted one! With the power of a single ordinary lightbulb, one could bake tiny, flat cakes made from miniature boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix and ice them with Betty Crocker frosting mix. Every time I saw one on TV, my heart ached with longing. With the magical Easy-Bake Oven, I could be the perfect miniature hostess, baking my own cakes in my own room and arranging magnificent tea parties for the friends who would all want to come to my place after school to share in the joys of flat, goopy, unevenly baked chemical-infused cakes. As I lay in bed at night, I imagined the imaginary row of tiny Betty Crocker boxes in the corner of my room above my imaginary oven, and thought how happy I would be if only I had a lightbulb-based appliance to call my own.

I asked my mother for one for my birthday. She wasn't concerned with how easy it was to burn oneself on the tiny pans. After all, she'd not only bought me the tiny iron but had also given me a Creepy Crawlers set with die-cast molds that cooked Plastigoop into little rubbery flowers and bugs over a hot plate on which I burnt my fingers time and time again. I started the fires in our fireplace and lit candles on my own as far back as I can remember. I did heavy yardwork and housework and cleaned with smelly chemicals from an early age. It's not like I was kept from physical risk. No, the obvious hazards of the toy were no issue; the problem was with the high cost of the tiny cake mixes. My mother wisely pointed out that for the price of two tiny cakes we could buy a full-sized cake mix to bake in the kitchen, or make a better one from scratch for less money, and we could frost it with homemade frosting that was much cheaper AND tastier than the stuff that came in the box. And since Mom and I baked together often, and my grandmother and aunt let me bake in their kitchens as well, it wasn't as if I couldn't bake a whole cake pretty much any time I wanted anyway. Damn. My mother's frugality made perfect sense, but I still longed for another dangerous appliance of my very own with which I could make real cakes that I could serve to real kids without any adult interference.

Happily, it wasn't long before I was having friends over for after-school omelettes, frying up sombrero sandwiches for them or baking things on my own in an empty house with some regularity. My mother usually got home an hour or two after I did, but sometimes stayed later in the afternoons for meetings or had musical rehearsals to attend, so I often had the house to myself before dinnertime from the age of six-and-a-half onwards. This was unusual as most of my friends' mothers didn't work outside the house, but kids were so often on their own at that time that nobody batted an eye. Kids were frequently off by themselves for hours at a time outside, the only stipulation being that they come home for dinner. Four-year-olds were told not to cross the street but to stay on the block when they left the house, but they were routinely out of visual range of their parents or grandparents as they rode tricycles up and down the block or ran to play in each others' houses and apartments with parents often left unaware that kids other than their own were even on the premises.

At age six my friend Diane and I would walk to the railroad tracks nearby and look for old bottles. We'd gather them in grocery bags, then carry them a few blocks away to the liquor store to trade them in for the five-cents-a-bottle deposit money. Little girls walking alone along railroad tracks attracted no attention at all. When my mother wanted a new carton of cigarettes on a Saturday afternoon while entertaining guests, she'd write a note to that effect, give me three dollars and send me down to that same liquor store; I'd trade the money and the note for a new carton of cigs, no questions asked. When I was just a little older and I wanted to ride my bike down to the center of town after school, I'd just leave a note on the kitchen counter and hop on my bike; nobody wore bike helmets and almost no-one had lights or reflectors on their bikes. My friend Toni's parents told her she couldn't ride downtown with me because she'd have to cross railroad tracks and they feared she'd get her tires caught in the tracks, panic, sit there and be hit by a train. We rolled our eyes at this absurd scenario, but never doubted the wisdom of two little girls on bikes driving around town by themselves until dusk.

Nowadays parents are cautioned not to give stuffed animals with any parts that could possibly come loose to any child under the age of three. Even a ribbon around a stuffed dog's neck is verboten. In my day, babies got teddy bears with hard plastic eyes that could easily come loose, or cheap stuffed monkeys or clowns with glued-on felt noses and mouths that came off within a week. Dolls with tiny bows, shoes and buttons that slipped off in baby's hands and fit easily into tiny mouths were given to toddlers with regularity. Tin dollhouses with sharp edges and corners were popular children's toys for girls; boys frequently got chemistry sets with chemicals dangerous enough to cause corrosion or explosions. Skaters didn't wear helmets, knee pads or elbow pads. Toy trains and cars were painted with lead paint. BB guns were common and tiny BB-sized holes in house, school and car windows were, too.

Sharp-ended lawn darts were thrown haphazardly around back yards during countless children's birthday parties and undersupervised Fourth of July parties to such bad effect that they were banned in the U.S. and Canada in the late 1980s. Wet plastic Slip 'n Slides ran down lawns and driveways across the nation as children hurled along the wet surfaces like bats out of hell, then spun out of control when they reached the ends of the long plastic sheets, scraping their way across thousands of sidewalks and into streets. Children hurled onto aggregate driveways, tearing up their knees and thighs along the way, and adults, expecting to slide like children, stopped suddenly in mid-slip after flinging themselves forward, fracturing necks and spines, sometimes resulting in paraplegia or worse.

My uncle tied thick, long rope swings around branches of tall trees that swung out over jutting hillsides so that my cousins and I could stand at the edges of cliffs, wrap our bare legs around the rope, rest our bottoms on giant knots and fly forward with ten to fifteen feet of nothing but air below our feet and above the steeply sloping hillside. The scratchy jute ropes chafed our thighs till they were raw, but a fall meant a long drop and a tumble down a rough and jagged hillside, so we clung to the rope and shouted for more pushes so we could fly far, far, until we swung directly over the gravel road fifteen, even twenty feet below.

Was the extra freedom to risk injury fun? Sure it was! I loved being on my own and getting up to whatever I wanted as a child. It did teach me a measure of independence and self-reliance, but I was built to be independent and self-reliant anyway. Do I prefer the world today, in which parents monitor their children so carefully and fear letting them out of the house so much? Well, that depends. Kids spend too much time in front of computers and TV sets while their expensive bikes sit idling in the garage. Is that really better for them than being left to their own devices in a neighborhood full of risks was a few decades ago? Probably. But I cherish my memories of riding or rollerskating around the neighborhood on my own when I was a kid, of wandering into other people's garages, apartments or houses five minutes after meeting them, of chatting them up without adults telling me what to do. There was pleasure in that, too.

I do fear we've gone too far in providing so much safe, passive, home-based entertainment for kids that they have little incentive to be creative and fight boredom by making their own fun and going beyond their front doors to see what the world has to offer. But I think a world in which parents take a more active interest in their children's lives and know what their kids are doing and where they are is not only a safer world but a friendlier world. Parents were so out of touch during my childhood that they let kids get away with a lot of bad behavior before intervening. Bullying was common and something kids were discouraged from telling adults about; if they complained they were labeled babies, whiners, snitches. Random adults, even strangers, felt free to intervene and even physically discipline other peoples' kids in public. Teachers and coaches teased and bullied students themselves. It happened all the time.

Even during my childhood, not all THAT long ago, some teachers still used corporal punishment on children because kids weren't treated with the respect that they regularly receive today. Parents and teachers often assumed that reason wouldn't work on kids, so they needed to be spanked or smacked to be kept in line. While we kids were taught that we must never talk back to adults, bullies were given free rein to mess with other kids, and teachers rarely did anything to prevent bullying beyond stopping fights that took place during school hours. Playground fist-fights were not uncommon when I was a child; there was even a certain expectation of bad behavior. Among boys, especially, there was an understanding that you'd probably get beaten up occasionally, and you just had to take your lumps and learn to fight back. Nowadays, anti-bullying policies at school make such displays of aggression rare and they're severely punished when they do take place.

Today's greater evidence of parental interest and the emphasis on care and awareness of risks does mean that there are many fewer injuries and preventable deaths. Kids may be coddled in some ways, but they're also aware that there are risks in the world to consider. Nowadays they don't have to look out as carefully, though, because authorities and laws have eliminated or ameliorated so many of the risks before they have a chance to experience them. Forty years ago, we learned by failing a lot more often. Such lessons stick better, but they can come at the cost of sometimes permanent physical or psychological injury. I still bear psychic scars from being regularly bullied for so many years as a child. Now children learn more by warning and avoidance instead of via trial by fire (or by toy iron). I think the drastic reduction in injuries is worth it, over all, but it does come at a societal cost: people expect to be protected and not to have to look out for themselves as much as they used to. I think the benefits to society are enormous, but we do lose some measure of beneficial self-reliance and wariness.

Increasingly, we're also used to being entertained and fed by others rather than entertaining ourselves and cooking at home. We have others provide food in precooked portions at restaurants or take it with us in disposable packaging so we don't even have to learn how to clean up after ourselves. We so fear the discomfort of being a little hungry that we overeat on a regular basis. We don't learn how to measure and regulate our food intake: we eat what's on our plate even when there's much too much, since restaurants routinely feed several servings of food at once in an effort to make us feel we're getting great value so that we'll pay more. Because we've relinquished so much of the responsibility for making and serving our own food, we've lost the knack of measuring out how much food we really need, so obesity is rampant. A third of the U.S. population is overweight, and another third is obese. Think of that: one out of three of us is obese. As a people we no longer expect discomfort to be a part of our lives, as our grandparents did. We seek medicines or junk food to allay aches, pains or boredom much more readily. We believe we deserve as much comfort and happiness as we can get. And I do mean "we": I hate pain and discomfort as much as the next person.

Please, don't misunderstand: I think our increased standard of living is wonderful. I love going out to eat. I love my Mac, my iPhone, movies on demand from Netflix. I'm thrilled that my daughter's schools have believed in respecting children and had extensive anti-bullying curricula. I think society has improved immeasurably both technologically and in our expectations that people all deserve to be treated fairly and kindly. But the expectation that life should generally be pleasant and pain-free used to be the worldview of none but a small segment of the extremely rich and powerful. Now we all feel like we are entitled to live as only the elite lived in the past. And that impacts us in some negative as well as positive ways.

I worry about a growing expectation that pain and effort will be exceptions rather than the rule in life, and that people shouldn't have to sacrifice to get ahead or help their families. Most of us have to do some unpleasant things every day and work harder than we might want to to accomplish most of the important things in life. While I love the increased ease and enjoyment that technological advances bring to my life, I also get satisfaction from doing things for myself, from making things from scratch, from putting effort into life. Increasingly, I grow frustrated with people's willingness to just get by with "good enough." Making an effort to do things well, to go a little further, shows respect, both or oneself and for others.

Life is so much easier in so many ways than it used to be, and we're insulated from so much effort. That's great if we channel the energy we save into being more helpful, productive, happy or engaged with others. But if it just means that we stop recognizing the beauty and benefits that come with effort, with challenge, with risk, then we've lost something valuable. I don't want us to get burned, but I'd like us to remember how to use the iron, how to cook a meal, how to write a real letter, if for no other reason than to recognize that there is an art to each of these, so that we can respect and appreciate those who do such things for us.

How do we learn to be aware and careful and to avoid unnecessary risks while still moving outside our homes and exploring the world? How do we enjoy our wonderful technological advances without being so completely seduced by them that we stop interacting with other people or the world directly? How do we restore our pleasure in making our own toys, food or entertainment sometimes so we can balance out the passive pleasures of life with the active ones? That's our challenge: to balance risks and freedoms with responsibility and caution so that we engage with the world and the people in it. We don't want to lose the lessons of the past or miss out on the life-enhancing innovations of the present. How do we synthesize the knowledge that comes from experience with the knowledge that comes from superior technology? How to we embrace our blessings without taking them for granted?