Just Messing Around

Book excerpt: Just Messing Around is a zany rollercoaster ride through a latchkey child’s world of antics and misadventures, laughter and fisticuffs, skirting problems, and hatching wacky schemes. The author, like so many of his generation, lived an unsupervised childhood that characterized many suburban Long Island communities of the early 60s. Absent parents, these kids ran wild in their rural, suburban world. They saw themselves as frontiersmen, daredevils, and self-confessed hellions. These children were also alone way too much, sometimes frightened, and in serious need of discipline and hugs. This heartwarming collection of stories, seen through the eyes of one kid, depicts their lives of roaming fields and woods, surviving their daily, madcap adventures, exploring haunted farmhouses, and, as we kids would say, just messing around.