Recently, as I doused our closet in room spray, my husband objected, noting that it “probably wasn’t good for our lungs”. My fancy new spray—aptly named “High Maintenance”—not good for the lungs? Well, we will die in freshly scented clothes, then.
His medical warning had little effect on me for good reason: I am a walking miracle, having spent a good decade of my life traveling in the back seat of the family car—windows up, inhaling cigarette smoke, hairspray and cheap colognes. Room spray, by comparison, seems benign.
For all our worries about nanoparticles and estrogen, nothing tested human biology like the combination of Marlboros, Aqua Net and Jovan Musk; and nothing absorbed these odors better than the plush upholstery of a 1985 Pontiac Bonneville. Add the intensifying effects of Florida sun and some freshly-applied nail polish, and you’ve created a mobile gas chamber—my childhood tradition for countless trips to Sunday morning church.
Even if I rode in a jar of hot fumes, I reflect with fondness on those years. The real beauty was not in the smoke and hairspray, of course—memorably pungent as those were. It was in the unlikely pair who got pregnant before marriage. It was a Navy guy who worked to move his young family out of the trailer park. It was a mom who took her kids to church, and her smoker husband who discovered Jesus. It ended with three kids and nine grandkids. Ultimately, it was God’s story—twelve little souls born of two redeemed sinners who had no money, no connections, and no plan.
Unplanned or not, my carcinogenic 1980’s upbringing has gained some stature in my eyes. My parents, despite their bumpy backstory, made everything seem effortless—and perhaps it really was. Their low-energy parenting had its merits, and chief among them was the sturdier humans it produced. I must, therefore, thank my parents for what they didn’t have and didn’t do.
My parents never obsessed over anything, yet I knew what they thought about everything. They never fretted about safety, cholesterol, or endocrine disruptors; they made few, if any, rules for the house. The ones they had could be summarized: Eat and do what you want, but remember that taxes, divorce, and communism are bad. Less was more, in truth.
They didn’t just play it loose on the health front, either: life itself was unscripted. With no drugged and sedated children and no “college readiness” rat race, my family life was largely a noisy free-for-all. If we were thereby less polished, we at least enjoyed liberty. We were free to work, free to play, and free to fail— so long as we did so within the moral absolutes of our Christian faith. Somehow this formula produced a lawyer, an architect, and a writer.
If they seemed a bit careless, they did a masterful job of creating self-starters. My dad wasn’t doing “intentional parenting,” nor was my mom anything like a “tiger mom.” If today’s children have helicopter parents, we had dirt-bike parents. They weren’t hovering around campus at teacher conferences or fretting over team tryouts. They felt no obligation to plan elaborate “picture parties” for prom—the family room wall would do just fine. They had great faith in common sense and natural immunity; being stupid had consequences, and hand sanitizer didn’t exist.
My children would consider all this part of a troubling past, too: We didn’t do organized sports. We didn’t schedule outings. We wandered the neighborhood without phones or protective gear. We didn’t eat organic food or carry water bottles. Even worse, we didn’t do “sports physicals” or routine checkups—instead, we got chicken pox, acne, and crooked teeth.
We didn’t have screens or schedules, but our corner TV was on duty around the clock; no hour was passed in silence. It blasted out news, game shows, soap operas and cartoons until Hawaii Five-O roared onto the screen—my doom signal for homework and dinner. Television would rattle on without me for a while, but I regularly sneaked out at 11:30 to catch Johnny Carson, a regrettable perk of being a first-grader with no bedtime.
My dad didn’t indulge much leisure, so we didn’t do vacations. However, we had a glorious beach nearby. Even so, our beach days were a mettle-testing affair: We brought a cooler of off-brand sodas, a couple bags of chips, and no sunscreen. We parked on the side of A1A and schlepped through sand dunes thick with sand spurs. Five sunny hours later, we were ready to peel our way into a tan. After rinsing our feet with a milk jug of saltwater, we crammed back into a hot station wagon for the sticky ride home. The two-Marlboro journey would usually have us there in 45 minutes.
Every now and then I share these snippets of lore with my children, who’ve been told to stay away from cigarettes, stay off the sand dunes, and wear sunscreen. They have far more, yet they know less. They can’t appreciate what they have, nor can they know what their generation lost—the beauty of being average, and the reckless rough-and-tumble of an ordinary day.
This originally appeared on Restoring Truth.
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