Teenagers home alone 2 weeks while parents went on a cruise
I've been reminiscing lately and remembered something I completely forgot about until now. when I was 17 and my brother was 15, my boomer parents decided to go to Alaska on a cruise. This was the late 1980s. A day or two before they left, they instructed us to make sure to do our laundry, make sure we grocery shop for ourselves and cook real food, not just eat cake and cookies, (they left an envelope with money) and told us we are not allowed to have friends over. Then they left... for two weeks to Alaska.With no way to directly contact them. I had a car and a part time job and we both went to school and job as if nothing was any different than normal other that I had to shop for some food occasionally.
Looking back on this, that is crazy. The only phone number they left is was the number for the cruise line. If something happened with the house (fire, furnace breakdown, flooding, accident/injury etc.) we would have been screwed. We would not have had any money to go to a hotel, or to a doctor, and would not have known who to call for repairs. Likewise, if they had died in a plane crash to or from Alaska, we would not have known how to pay any bills, mortgage, utilities, etc. and would have had no one to help. No money. Not even sure if they had any life insurance.
We both just went about our days like this was all normal without even thinking about the risks. My brother let his laundry pile up and I remember telling him that I'm not his mom and I'm not going to do it for him so he better or he will run out of clean pants lol..
In today's world looking back, I think my boomer parents were not good parents. I can't even imagine something like that happening today.
That was the ultimate in latchkey right there. They brought me back a souvenir though, which I found in a box a few days ago, which brought back this memory.