Do you know where your children are?

Times were certainly different when I was young. During summer holidays, I would see my mother for lunch and then I would disappear for the day. I had to be home for dark or if Mom screamed my name from the front door step. Apart from those two things, my day was my own. I wonder if my mom really knew what I was up to, if I would have been allowed quite so much freedom.

For the most part, my days of youth were spent fairly innocently. We played at the school grounds on the swings, we rode bikes, we bought $2 worth of 2 cent gum, we talked and talked about things only 10 year old kids understand, and we visited locations of old murders.

The talk of the town for years during my childhood was of Colin Thatcher and his wife, Joanne. Joanne was shot in the shoulder one year from a high powered rifle shot into her kitchen window after a bitter custody battle. She was later murdered -- beaten and shot in the head -- in her garage. Colin was charged for it eventually, but we all know that it was their oldest son who did it. However, since the only decent thing Colin ever did was take the blame (or have it be placed on him) for his kid, we'll let him do the time.

Anyway, the point of this. The house where Joanne was murdered was in relative proximity to my childhood 'hood. In fact, we all knew exactly where it was. And my friend and I used to bike out to the house every so often to peer in the windows of the garage to see where it happened. In our heads, we were daring sleuths out to discover the truth.

This would have been after Thatcher was imprisoned, so I would have been 8 or 9. Technically, the murder site had long since been cleaned up. I can't imagine we saw much more than an old stain on the floor of the garage. But we convinced ourselves it was more than that. Those days we thought we were Nancy Drew.

And my mother thought we were just out riding.