Tammy

In November 1984, an 8-year old girl from Exeter, New Hampshire did not come home from school. By all accounts she was shy, timid and promptly returned home from school each day. But on Tuesday, the 13th she didn’t. She was in third grade.

I could never be a parent today. While I appreciate the idea of a close-knit community with shared accountability across families, modern parenting feels suffocatingly nosy, judgmental, and hyper-protective in all the wrong ways. Maybe it's always been like this, perhaps depending on where you live, but I wonder what other mothers would think of me if I didn't drive my kids to school, didn't wait for them at the bus stop, or God forbid, didn't wait with them.

I turned six at the end of August 1980. Two weeks later, I started first grade. I don't remember my parents ever showing me how to get to school or which route to take, but my elementary school was close enough that every single one of us in the neighborhood walked. To and from, every day, and we were always on time. It was .6 miles each way, I guess. Seemed like it took us forever. There were rolling hills. I lived at the very top which is “the second highest” point in town as my mother would say. We usually walked in a group, but if I left late or someone was sick (I never was), I walked alone. I remember one day I left for school and it was so cold out, the wind was whipping and I looked down at my legs shivering. I had red tights on. It didn't matter what the weather was. It would have been an extreme case if we ever got a ride to school.

I think this experience was good for me. I didn't think twice about it then. We had a bus system so kids who didn't live close enough took the bus. There was no carpool line. No pickup line. I don't really understand why parents do this now at all especially if their educational board has a transportation fleet. I live in a town today where friends have children who live a walkable distance from school, and they still get picked up anyway. It's safer today than it was when I was young.

When I was growing up, Tammy Belanger disappeared from a nearby town in my small New England state. And to this day, she has not been found. No parent panicked. We still walked to school every day. My parents didn’t talk to me about this. I don’t recall kids speaking about it much at school, but it was a long time ago. I think when I look back I had a quiet concern about it. My relationship with my parents was not such that I could bring this subject up to them and they would take me seriously or talk to me about it.

The newspapers reported on the investigation and search for Tammy every week for months. By December of that year