DATE: Tuesday, July 8, 1997                 TAG: 9707080044

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson 

                                            LENGTH:   71 lines

"WHEN I WAS A KID..." STORIES DON'T ALWAYS FALL ON DEAF EARS

YOU KNOW HOW teen-agers cringe when you start a sentence with, ``When I was a kid . . . ''?

My children - 4 and 6 - are still too young to do that. It's wonderful. They are fascinated by my childhood stories, which they place roughly back in the Ice Age. They ask me questions like: ``Were there mothers back then?'' ``Did you play when you were little?'' ``Did they have swings?''

Having no relatives in the area to dispute my stories, I go on unbridled about how hard I had it. I shamelessly create those walking-3-miles-in-the-snow-to-school stories, tacking on a line from fellow columnist Ronald L. Speer that it was ``uphill both ways.'' I make myself sound like some wizened pioneer who crossed the prairie in a covered wagon.

``When I was a kid,'' I'll start, with the ``I'' emphasis that these tales of yore require, ``we didn't have an ocean or pools to go to. We had to go swimming in a lake, with mud on the bottom. There were snakes in it, and fish that bit you if you stopped to float.''

Their eyes grow wide and I can see that they feel sorry for me, which only spurs me to milk the story for all it's worth.

``And my parents didn't take us, we had to ride our bicycles for hours to get there. Across highways, down little dirt roads, through dozens of neighborhoods and even woods. By the time we got there, we were dripping in sweat. We were so tired we could hardly swim.''

They ``ooh'' and ``aah'' in amazement as we cruise to the beach in our air-conditioned car.

And though they are astounded by my torturous summers in the Midwest, I am by now fairly floating in the memories of them. And I feel sorry for my own children, and other kids of this fast-paced world, who will not know the unfettered freedoms of summers back then.

I can almost feel the refreshing water as we fell from our dusty bikes into the cool deep lake. How we would wile away hours flirting with the lifeguard. How we'd lie baking on the banks of the lake, ignorant of the dangers of ultraviolet rays.

The very idea of letting my children cross a highway on a bike today is unthinkable. And pedaling on isolated roads through thick woods? No way - who knows who could be lurking out there? And giving a kid free rein for an entire day without sunscreen? The ultimate in recklessness.

Even when my children reach an age when they can go off by themselves, I'm sure I'll have them so burdened with beepers and cell phones and whatever other electronic gizmo gets invented by then, that they won't be able to travel more than a block without me tracking their whereabouts.

But back when I was a kid, we were free in summer at a very early age. We'd swim at the lake, hang out at the Laundromat, the train depot, the ball park, wherever we could go by bike, from dawn till dusk.

``We didn't have Discovery Zones and Funscapes and Chuck E. Cheeses,'' I tell my children, observing their faces, aghast at how I survived such deprivation.

Again I find myself privately rhapsodizing over how wonderful it would be to never see that stuffed gray Chuck E. Cheese again. (Is anyone else on to the fact that the guy's a rat?) Not to ever have to wait for those little tickets to zip out of the game machines, creating yet another kid gambler.

``We had to put on our own plays, we came up with our own games, and we made our own tents and play houses out of blankets and cardboard boxes.''

By the time I am through this little blast to the past, I am ready to ship my kids off to my sleepy hometown in Missouri for the summer. As if that life was still there.

But, no, those summer days exist only in my memory, and I plan to relive them as often as possible. Or at least until my kids start rolling their eyes when I say, ``When I was a kid . . . ''

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