When I was a kid, most afternoons the nun who ran the classroom would send someone outside to clap the erasers.

This plum assignment was usually reserved for a student considered trustworthy. In other words, for a goody-goody.

The lucky student would leave class carrying the erasers and venture out onto what passed for the playground to pound out the chalk dust. On a nice day, the student could saunter and clap slowly, stretching the task into as long a mission as seemed credible.

In many schools today, the blackboard has gone the way of typewriters, replaced by whiteboards and erasable markers. That’s OK, because I doubt a teacher exists who would send a student carrying chalky erasers out of the building alone.

This is what I think about in the wake of the senseless tragedy in Newtown, Conn. Like most people, I have my opinions about guns, particularly assault weapons. I'm not here to debate that, because my thoughts won't change anyone's mind.

I also agree with those who say something must be done to identify and help people with mental illnesses. However, I arrive here today with no plan to offer.

What I think about today are the children, and not just the children of Newtown. The children of America have lost their freedom. They have lost the freedom that should come with childhood.

I think I was nine, maybe 10, when I started riding my bicycle to the swimming pool on hot summer days. I pedaled alone for a mile or more, and spent long hours at the pool unsupervised. No one thought it odd. All my friends did the same.

Most mornings, even before I was too young to go to the pool, I walked to the supermarket with a list of two or three items my mother needed. I was maybe six or seven when I started those short trips. No one thought it odd. Every kid ran errands for mom.

The closest store that sold penny candy was six or eight blocks away. Several times a week, a girlfriend and I would walk those blocks clutching a nickel or a dime and return with a brown sack full of treats. No one thought it odd. The little store bustled with kids with coins.

I was nine or 10 the first time I went to a Saturday matinee.

Connecticut School Shooting Victims 28 Gallery: Connecticut School Shooting Victims

Two quarters brought two movies and a snack in a theater filled with rowdy unsupervised kids. No one thought it odd that their parents had opted for other Saturday activities.

We had no cell phones, no cards at the police station imprinted with our fingerprints. We’d find a clock or ask a stranger for the time because our only rule was “be home for dinner.”

No nun ever hesitated to send us outside with the erasers because the idea of a lurking stranger picking off kindergartners with bullets never entered their minds.

Kids today sit in locked classrooms in locked school buildings with police cars circling. If mom wants to visit, she rings a bell and shows ID.

After school, kids head out to supervised activities, with adults always watching. Unless you live next to a park, it’s possible to spend the summer in suburbia without ever hearing the sounds of children at play.

Our children have lost their freedom to be kids. That’s one of the saddest statements I can make about the society we’ve created.

They’ve missed the fun of playing pick-up games with no adults enforcing the rules. They’ve missed the joy of exploring the woods behind the neighborhood and the anticipation of knocking on some kid’s door to ask if he wants to come out to play.

They’ve lost the freedom to figure out how to grow up without adults always hovering, hovering.

I pity them, and I apologize, because this is the America we have created.

NANCY ESHELMAN: columnist1@verizon.net