Parenting -- Circa 1955

Recently, I found some old black and white photos of the family, including several of me showing off my new blue Schwinn. I can't remember some of the people in the snapshots, but I sure do remember the color of my first two-wheeler.

Some days that bike was my horse, a la Dale Evans; some days it was just my blue Schwinn zipping past the cookie cutter ranch-style houses in suburbia.

We customized the bikes with horns or bells and, most often, a front basket attached to the handlebars. We fell down. We got up. We embellished and tried to impress with stories about how we got the skinned elbows and knees.

Today, our parents would be harshly accused of bad parenting and pilloried by their peers for not outfitting us with helmets and knee pads.

Another old photo showed my aunt resembling a float from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade -- that's how ready she was to give birth to my cousin. In one hand she had a beer; in the other, a cigarette.

Today, fingers would point, tongues would tsk and she'd probably be accused of child endangerment.

No helmets, no padding, no knowledge of pre-natal care -- but the adults didn't seem to worry. Bad parenting? Hardly. Just different priorities --- like Communists hiding under our beds, air raid drills, and, most importantly at least in my strict Catholic family, how to shield us from Elvis' gyrating pelvis.

Teenage Memoir -- Definitely a Short Story

Miley Cyrus and Sean Johnson writing memoirs? They're teenagers. Can I assume they texted the story to their editors? When did they find the time what with learning Hannah Montana's lines, concert appearances, training for the Olympics, ballroom dancing and -- don't forget -- homework.

An Amazon reader review of a Miley biography complains that it's too short. No big surprise there. How much is there to say about those first 18 years?

I can see how both of these young women could inspire others to pursue their dreams but what will they do for Memoirs - Act II?