I grew up a latch-key kid. I remember reading something in fifth or sixth grade about "latch-key kids" being this phenomenon that was further evidence of our society falling apart. Everyday for a couple of years after I read that article, as I pulled my key from my backpack and let myself into my empty house, I thought, "I am what's wrong with America." But what could I do? My parents needed to work. And America would have judged them, too, if they'd chosen to stay home instead. There's no winning.
There's no winning, because being a latch-key kid means coming home to an empty house. It means getting dinner started and too many hours of television. I watched a lot of superhero cartoons as a kid. One guy who's got a special talent no one else has, all alone in his secret identity, but just ambitious enough, just irreverent enough to dare to do something bigger than anyone would ever give him credit for.
I don't think I ever really stopped being a latch-key kid. I moved out of my parents house just before my seventeenth birthday, lived with my brother and sister-in-law. Learned to ride the city bus to school, learned to cut through people's yards in order to come home for lunch. And then college, and then being single in a city of 10 million people in South-Central China. I don't think it as often as I did when I was 12 years old, but every now and again, I wonder, "Am I still what's wrong with America?"
I still find myself coming home to an empty house. Michael's workday is just beginning as mine is ending. He comes home just as I am drifting asleep. I wondered today, if our family ever includes children, if they'll ever read about themselves in magazines, and wonder, "Am I what's wrong with America?"
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