I was raised in a powder blue two bedroom, turned three bedroom home. Most of the time the door was unlocked, and sometimes the door was left wide open. When the latter happened I usually waited until someone else got home to walk inside first. Just in case.

We had neighbors who felt comfortable walking into the house without knocking. This was not by invitation from us to do so.

Actually, we were always confused as to why they felt that comfortable.

But life is ever-changing. Except, it seems I had one constant as a child: if I left my bike in the front yard, it would most definitely not be there the next morning. My brothers knew this constant as well.

At times we’d risk leaving our bikes on the front porch. It was set up like an open windowed hallway that led to the front door. There were two ways of getting into the house, the front door and the sliding glass door that was right next to it.

The glass door was sometimes locked.

Our bikes would be brought out of the yard and onto the porch and we’d think they were safe.

The next day they would be gone. We went through a lot of bikes when we were kids.

We had our suspicions on who the culprits were, which would later be confirmed when we’d see one later on a bike that looked awfully like our own. Most of the time we didn’t know where they lived, but even if we did the parents would deny, deny, deny that they knew of a bike that looked like ours.

Welcome to (slightly) lower-middle class America.

It remind me of one of those, “did you even…if you never…”

Did you even have a childhood if you never had your bike stolen?