Child Labor

It's usually boring being a kid around the house on weekends. After the run of Saturday morning cartoons, there was nothing much to do but wait for lunch. All the other kids were, like me, trapped indoors as well. Parents in those days didn't like their kids going out before lunch on weekends, because these dumb kids usually forget all about eating lunch and play until late in the afternoon. Mind you, this was the age before playstations and the internet, and a boring day indoors was A BORING DAY INDOORS.

"Why don't you read a book or study your lessons?" mom would say, compounding the misery.
'Why don't you just shut your pie-hole about books and let me out of this stupid house, mom?', I'd usually think to myself. I may be young, but I wasn't foolish enough to get myself into a morning-long whipping. Also in those days, kids actually get their dose of whoop-ass and child services won't give a rat's ass because it's how things worked between parents and their bratty seed.

Every so often, however, my dad would go for a drive out and offer an exciting and fun escape from the house.

As soon as I hear the jingling of my dad's car keys, I'd stop whatever I was doing (such as staring at a wall or twiddling my toes) and ask if I could come with him. I never really asked where we were going, it didn't matter anyway. My dad would give me a flat no, so I whine and be a bitch, complaining how there's nothing to do indoors, another no. At this point I'd be such a brat and throw a tantrum. Then he'd say yes, as long as I just stay in the car. Perfect!

So I put on my shoes and happily ride shotgun. My dad would hum a tune or two, then stop at some alien location, parking the car by the curb. "You wait for me here, and don't leave the car." he'd mutter while turning off the engine. He'd disappear into some random building and I'd be left alone in the car, with doors unlocked and windows half-open. (I'm not really sure if the streets were safer in those days, or if my dad had secretly hoped that his bratty son would be kidnapped and he'd finally be rid of me)

At this point, I'm ecstatic just being somewhere I haven't been before, while in the general safety of the car. I'd tinker with the radio, scoot over to the driver's seat and pretend to drive, snoop around the car, opening glove boxes and secret pockets. When I get bored of changing the station or playing formula one driver, I'd jump into the backseat and just lie there, daydreaming away until dad came back and we went home.

Good times, huh? In retrospect, not so much.

*****

I was standing around some busy street yesterday, passing time away before an appointment when a car stopped in front of me and a man got out the driver's seat. "Stay in the car and don't get out." he muttered to a kid glued to his Playstation in the passenger's seat before closing the door. How cool it would have been if I had a Playstation back in the day, I wouldn't even have left the house at all.

After a few minutes, a tow truck came by and parked in front of the car. The I'll-tow-your-car-while-you're-not-looking-and-have-a-good-laugh-about-it-at-the-station-guys looked the car over, and saw the kid inside. They looked at each other, scratched their heads and drove off. This happened another couple of times until the man emerged from a building, got back in the car and drove off.

Now that particular scene shed a lot of light on the matter. This kid's presumably a reluctant passenger in this trip, the only reason for his presence, to thwart the tow-truck company's attempt at a good pay-day. You can't tow a car with someone inside, I'm guessing. And waiting for the driver to return to give him a ticket was not worth the hassle while the prospect of other prey illegally parked on other streets remained. This kid probably got some ice-cream as a reward for doing his old man a favor, lucky bastard. This, folks, is responsible parenting at its finest.

Looking back, I never got anything, not even a dog biscuit, for being a tow-truck-deterrent. And I unwittingly volunteered for that job? Talk about lambs to the slaughter.