In the summer between 7th & 8th grade, almost every day, I’d dip into my birthday money, meet my across the street neighbor/BFF Christine in the middle of the street, and say, “Let’s go up to the stores.”

She’d run back into her house grab some money and a lighter, and yell to her mom as the door slammed behind her.

Then we’d begin our 2 mile trek up to “the stores”, a strip mall called Sunset City on Deer Park Avenue.

We’d start on our quiet cul-de-sac and continue until out of sight of our nosey neighbors.

Then we’d light ’em up and smoke our little heads off as we walked past the pond and High School, crossed the overpass above the Southern State Parkway, and arrive at our destination.

We’d hang out, sometimes meet up with our friends, hopefully see some hot guys, then cap it off with a nice lunch of chicken fingers, fries, and a Fribble.

I’m sorry, what?

When you’re going into 8th grade … hold on, let me do the math … you’re 12 years old (!) and Christine and I were walking around on avenues and overpasses and having full meals of lunch and smoking and talking to Lord knows who and.. and… and…

What in the world???? We were like 2 middle-aged Patty & Selmas walking the streets of North Babylon!!

Today, if I don’t see my son (also 12) for longer than 20 minutes, I start hyperventilating and run outside screaming his name.

Ok, I’m exaggerating (a little), but there is no way in H-E-double hockey sticks I’d be letting him walk up to our town’s “stores”.

I’m not even going to lie and say it’s because we have busier roadways where we live now, or what-have-you because, uh, remember the part above about avenues and overpasses? Yeah.

And I can’t even say that it’s because things were “different” back then because I just Googled “Crime on Long Island in 1989” and well, I’m not going to bring everyone down with that information.

Back then, the article would run in Newsday, maybe on Channel 12 news, and be gone.

Now, with all the internet news and social media, not only do you get the story, but also the pleasure of everyone’s opinion/horror story from the “Mom’s of <insert town name here>” pages. So I basically never let my kids out of my sight.

Eventually they’ll wisen up and start asking if they can venture further out from our neighborhood, but for now, I think they are perfectly fine in my protective mommy bubble where they can never get their little hands on cigarettes or meet hot boys!!