I think the stick went just far enough. There was obviously damage.
Thing is you didn't have the internet and The Dept. of Family Services back when we were being nitwits. Now, kids can't do jack shit w/o everyone being on it like stink on a dog's butt.
I can't imagine what would happen today if my parents had let me go to my friend's house by charging down a hill on my bike through 3 cross streets in order to coast up one more hill to get to her street. Never got hit, which is a freaking miracle. My folks would take me on business trips and just give me a roll of quarters for the arcade and swimming pool and I run all over the hotels while they were at meetings. By the time I was 10 I could make connecting flights in Denver, Houston and California by myself and they quit having me escorted after I "got away" from one cause she was gonna cost me making the next flight.
Shit, if it was even revealed today that a kid my age was on her own near as much as I was you'd have every freaking "My babies are never outta my sight" moron screaming, "What kind of a mother" at my Mom and starting on-line petitions to get the cops out there "doing something about it". I mean, hell NAB, how could you're mother possibly claim to have loved you when she let you out of her sight long enough to even do all those things. Didn't she love you enough to wrap you up in cellophane and bubblewrap.